


Wanted Deadly Things

by quamquam20



Series: Want Something Done Right [2]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Abandonment, Age Difference, Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal, Angst with a Happy Ending, Birth Control, Bisexual Ben Solo, Bisexuality, Blood Kink, Bored and Ignored Kink, Breathplay, Breeding Kink, Character Death, Circle Jerk, Come Marking, Come as Lube, Cuckolding, Daddy kink without the word daddy, Dark Rey (Star Wars), Dirty Talk, Double Penetration, Drunk Masturbation, Dubious Consent, Epilogue, Eugenics, Exhibitionism, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Face Slapping, Fear Play, Felching, Femsub, Foot Fetish, Force Choking (Star Wars), Free Use, Gangbang, Group Sex, HIPAA violations, Happy Ending, Harems, Heartbeat Kink, Heavy Angst, Hotwife Kink, Humiliation, Hux dies, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Large Cock, Love Confessions, M/M, Mass Death, Medical Procedures, Menstrual Kink, Multi, Murder Kink, No Pregnancy, Orgasm Control, Outdoor Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Polyamory, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Power Imbalance, Praise Kink, Redeemed Ben Solo, Resistance Play, Restraints, Reverse Harem, Rey Palpatine, Rey orders the knights to kill her but it's a power move, Rough Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Sadism, Sharing a Bed, Squirting, Temperature Play, Threesome, Vaginal, Voyeurism, Watching Someone Sleep, Xenophilia, minor food issues, non-reylo breakup angst but it's hopeful, planned state-sponsored mass killing, poe dies, primal kink, ruined orgasm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:06:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 42,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27263956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quamquam20/pseuds/quamquam20
Summary: After his plan of sending each of the Knights of Ren to kill Rey backfires, Kylo must face the consequences.A dark!Rey alternate ending toWant Something Done Right(E, KoR/Rey & Kylo/Rey, ~13k two shot).Behind him, one knight lets out a low, admiring whistle that Kylo can hear even over the pounding of blood in his head.“Give them to me,” Rey hisses, teeth bared. It takes all his concentration to loosen her grip with the Force, to pry off the worst of the constriction.Isthatwhat she's here for? It's not even about him.He has a light-headed urge to laugh.“They're yours,” he chokes out.
Relationships: Knights of Ren/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Knights of Ren/Knights of Ren, Knights of Ren/Kylo Ren/Rey, Knights of Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo
Series: Want Something Done Right [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1876801
Comments: 437
Kudos: 303





	1. Arrived

* * *

Ending II

“And?”

“I failed in one of my tasks,” Ap'lek says.

It's just the two of them in Kylo's quarters aboard the _Steadfast_ and the beveled white walls seem like they're closing in.

“Which one?” Rey is either dead or unharmed, and both are horrible in distinct ways.

“She's alive.”

He hates the relief that pours down his back. And the envy. It was easier when the knights tried to hurt her—then he could just feel guilty with none of the sick curiosity about what Rey does when there isn't a fight at all. Does she talk? Did she smile? Did Ap'lek get close enough to smell her? He wants to know what she said, what noises she made. He could ask, getting answers that will crawl deep and nest in his dreams.

Ap'lek hesitates and, not for the first time, Kylo can sense a well-hidden compassion in him.

“I think you should—”

The alarms sound, drowning him out with blaring that's loud enough to pressurize. There's no time to retrieve his helmet, but Kylo snatches his lightsaber from a nearby table. The bond is suddenly unblocked and he's sure. The Force signature blazing in the distant main hangar has a new color, but he would know it anywhere.

“It's her.”

* * *

“Thank you, General,” Kylo says calmly. “We'll take it from here.” He waves the remaining stormtroopers from the littered throne room. Behind him, the Knights of Ren shift, weapons clanking.

Rey is draped in a tattered black cloak, hood pulled up, and her chest heaves with exertion and a menacing exhilaration as she stands over the bodies of the four stormtroopers that escorted her in. The dark side churns through the air around her, a murkiness sparked with rage.

Hux sputters.

“Supreme Leader, surely whatever this...” He wrinkles his nose at Rey. “... _intrusion_ wants should be shared with the council. And,” Hux adds, “I just received word that she was followed by Poe Dameron. He's being taken into custody as we speak.”

“I seem to recall you describing this 'intrusion' as a non-issue several weeks ago, General,” Kylo says.

Before he can reply, Rey flings Hux from the room and slams the blast door down behind him with a reverberating thud. When she whips back around to face Kylo, her eyes flicker with amber and he always knew she would be like this, one day. That she could sharpen her pain to a faultless point and her childhood tears would finally slow and she would be free. But now that it's here, it looks far less like liberation and more like torture. Beneath the armor of wrath, she’s reopened her old wounds to feed it.

Is that what he looks like? It must be close. No _wonder_ she tried so hard to save him. With every part of her and every drop of bravery she had, she tried to bring him back. Ben Solo—someone she never really met but believed in anyway, even when she was the only one.

And now she's done.

“Rey—” A phantom hand covers his mouth, silencing him. The stormtrooper that confiscated her lightsaber lies dead on the floor, the weapon still clutched in their fingers. Rey ignores it, stepping over tangled limbs and stopped hearts to raise her arm, lifting Kylo off of his feet by the throat. He tries to breathe through his nose, a pinched-off half gasp that's instinctive and ineffective. Kicking and struggling is useless, too, and he wills his body to hang limp; a target that doesn't fight back is less tempting. He's been where she is now—newly fallen and frenzied. Her reflexes are unshackled, her prey drive irrepressible.

Behind him, one knight lets out a low, admiring whistle that Kylo can hear even over the pounding of blood in his head.

“Give them to me,” Rey hisses, teeth bared. It takes all his concentration to loosen her grip with the Force, to pry off the worst of the constriction.

Is _that_ what she's here for? It's not even about him.

He has a light-headed urge to laugh.

“They're yours,” he chokes out.

She drops him unceremoniously. Breathing burns, but he takes a heaving gulp. Getting to his feet is out of the question, so he settles for kneeling. He's losing everything and they're all watching and he just doesn't care.

Because here, at her feet, there's an overdue clarity. A revelation, at the very end.

None of it was worth it.

* * *

His eyes are as bottomless as ever. Spilling caverns that she wanted to dive into, once.

Her lightsaber flies into her outstretched hand. Rey ignites it and, bathed in the steady blue glow of the blade, she sets her jaw.

One of the knights touches her shoulder to get her attention, but she can't tear her gaze away from the man on his knees in front of her—the source of so much of her exhausted pain. Last night, she finally let it go. In her moon-dark room, she saw the lie. She _is_ alone—more than ever. All because he did something to her, waking up sleeping things that should have stayed dormant; cutting through her mind, reaching for her hand. It's all tainted by him and the worse-than-isolated realization that the one person who truly knows her doesn't want her to be alive. That he would rather send strangers to kill her than to ever touch her again. He didn't even care that they fucked her. So she'd let Ben Solo go, hope leaving with him, fading into daybreak like a lifelong spell being broken. No, she is here, by herself, to take what she's earned. And with them, she won't have to hide.

“It has to be someone you care about,” the knight says to her.

Rey finds the shape of Kylo Ren in her mind, and the web of anguish and grief spun around him. But inside of that is something dead, shut down and empty.

She lowers the lightsaber and extinguishes it. It falls to the floor in a crunching bounce, then rolls away with the telltale rattle of a snapped emitter lens. Useless. Torn apart and repaired, only to be discarded at her feet like the burdensome legacy of failure that it is.

“Then not him,” she says simply. On the far side of the chamber is a low-backed throne: hers, now.

“Rey. Please.” It's a testament to how thoroughly broken Kylo is that he doesn't even try to hush his voice when he begs, like killing him would be better than what she just said.

And, in her new cruelty, she has enough viciousness to make him live with it—with himself and what he's done.

“Give me your lightsaber.” Rey holds out her hand impatiently, and wraps her fingers around the hilt when he passes it to her, not bothering to glance down before she turns to the knights. “Take me to Poe Dameron.”

* * *

They wait, on the other side of the reinforced cell door. All but one, who stayed behind to guard Kylo until she completes the task and returns with her knights, as their new master, to deal with him.

When Poe sees her, relief washes over his face. Immediately, he launches into an escape strategy. Always making a plan, and Rey lets him share his last one with a trusted friend. _So self-absorbed_ , she thinks, disgust and affection swirled into an odd medley that tastes like salt in her mouth. He doesn't know he's the final obstacle, can't tell that she's hunched with anticipation.

“Listen, we gotta get out of here. The escape pods are close. Lateral port hangar.” He points with his chin, wrists and ankles still restrained in the interrogation chair. “If you can distract those guys out there for long enough, I'll...”

He trails off. And _that_ she feels. Every emotion is raw and unfiltered, bypassing her brain to go right into the rest of her body. Tears fall hotly and they must be coming from her but she doesn't remember the blurring.

“Rey?”

She ignites the lightsaber, and it crackles red in the dim cell. Finally, he sees.

“What did they do to you?” The stunned anguish in his voice already sounds like giving up.

It's fast. She thought it would take time, but she aimed well and he's gone before she wonders if she should say goodbye. And what happened inside of him happens to a secret place in her. It gutters out, and she looks around the small chamber, lost.

 _Something_ did that. It couldn't have been her.

Her hands. It's like she's noticing them for the first time, and maybe that's why they all wear gloves. Short nails, familiar lines crisscrossing her palms. The same freckles sprinkled across the backs. They're incredible, but they don't seem like hers because her body is new.

Rey already knows what's strapped to the chair. She doesn't want to look. The cell is preternaturally silent, filled with a sharp whiff of burned muscle and fabric and bone. Even a faint hint of hair, from the dark patch on his chest that she saw once or twice as he left the refresher after a shower, towel tied securely around his hips, smile cocky. She didn't mind looking then, so maybe she owes him this.

Lifting her head, the first things she notices are his open, vacant eyes and death-slackened mouth. It rips a chord in her and something unbearable and monstrous rushes in. To expel it, she screams, ear-splitting and panic-stricken. She's all gone. If they don't accept her, she'll orbit alone, like a burnt-out star. She _has_ to get this out.

It doesn't work.

She tries again, crouching to empty her lungs completely because it's at the very bottom of them. But it's there to stay, threaded through tiny vessels and tied off. She gives up.

When Rey steps numbly out of the cell, the Knights of Ren kneel.

* * *

“Where is he?” Her voice is violence, marring everything it touches.

The knight—the one from last night—is infuriatingly calm. Outside the empty holding cell, two dazed executioner troopers check their laser axes for damage.

“He escaped.”

She needs to hurt Kylo. Over and over again, whenever she wants. She has plans: that's why she kept him. And, although the knights bear a passing resemblance, there can be no substitutions.

“He was restrained,” she says through stony clenched teeth. “Unarmed.”

The knight inclines his head in acknowledgment. “And strong with the Force.”

Rey tears a pipe from the wall, high above them, and steam pours from the wrenched metal.

* * *

“The Supreme Leader has defected.” Hux shakes with barely contained rage, saliva flying as he speaks. He's deliberately ignoring her, even as she storms the length of the long, low-ceilinged command debriefing room and brushes past the back of his chair.

“This is a trick,” he continues. She stops in front of an expanse of windows. “I will not let the Resistance mock us by sending a nameless—”

Rey chokes his words off. From the other side of the room, she fists her hand. The part of her that keeps its distance, that observes her emotions and tells her that they will pass, is absent and her mind is a roar. For a fleeting moment, Hux's eyes widen and she feels his regret and fear and the knowledge that he has made a final, grave miscalculation. She can taste it, like something delectable that burns going down, and Rey hates that she's waited so long to be like this. That she fought it so hard. It comes as naturally as breathing.

With a flick of her arm, she hurls him into the ceiling, cracking the surface like ice, and drives his broken body into the floor with an unmistakable crush. In the deafening quiet that follows, a pool of blood spreads over the black floor.

Rey trains her features into a semblance of composed authority, even as she gasps for air. The truth is that she wants to kill them all, to leave the room dead behind her. By the door, one of the Knights of Ren stifles a groan.

The lingering, unvoiced question—if anybody else has an objection to the change in command—hangs in the wake of her. The members of the Supreme Council avert their gazes. She could bring the entire _Steadfast_ crashing down into the moons around them. They could all be shrapnel if she wanted, sea-gouging wreckage and ash that floats to nothingness.

When she speaks, her words are soft and clear.

“My name is Rey and I am the Supreme Leader.” She studies each council member in turn. “The meeting is over.”

* * *

Wide, flat steps elevate the boxy throne and, standing in front of it, looking up, Rey is unmoved. No thrill of power. No urge to find out what it feels like to sit in it.

She's indifferent about this part; she's here for the knights, who are currently waiting for their first commands from their new master. She's grateful for the cloak's threadbare hood because it shields the sides of her face from their searching glances. A coarse kind of suspense congests the impressive chamber, an uncertainty and a hunger. They're pleased to see her, as different as she is, but they're unsure of the rules. Or if there _are_ rules.

And beneath that, Rey senses a single undercurrent of animosity, of lidded jealousy, and she's not familiar enough with their Force signatures yet to pick it out of the group or to determine who it's directed at. So she turns, eyes flashing as she searches, and asks.

“Who would like to bring something to my attention?”

The one she knows only from a distance, the first knight Kylo sent, steps forward. Someone kicks his boot: a reminder that she's combustible. A warning that he ignores, too intent to care.

“Master, I haven't touched you yet.”

The title she cares about rolls, round and perfect in his mouth, and she would chew it off of his tongue if he weren't wearing a helmet. What he says is true, and Rey already knows that without a modicum of fairness, their leashes will snap. She has her favorites but hasn't tried him, only hearing the sounds he makes when he's getting off, and she's ready to correct the imbalance. Since their first meeting, she's thought about him and how he resisted touching himself, forest-hidden, until her gasps made him forget his mission. Now, her conquering bloodlust transforms easily into an impulse that has her nodding at the nervous guards to leave her alone with the knights.

“And you want to?” Slowly, she pulls off the cloak, and lets it be a heap on the floor. They are hers: usable and ready. If any of them need to walk away, they have plenty of time—the underfed stare she's giving him is ample warning. None move, and the atmosphere is a brazen, thirsting thing that leaves her grimy.

“Yes.”

“What's your name?”

“Kuruk.”

“Kuruk,” she repeats, feeling it between her lips.

He shivers as she approaches, as she traces his helmet's blinder panels and vocoder grid. He's only a bit taller than her, but bulky in his armor.

“Yes, Master.”

The intimacy of his name, the first of theirs she speaks, must make the others envious. Or maybe it's another ritual she's discovering. They offer their names, one-by-one, nodding when she says them back. In front of her, Kuruk is removing his belt unhurriedly, letting the long, flexible armor beneath flap open. Nothing will interrupt what they're going to do. Rey slides off her old boots, dropping them like dregs from her past life. Her bare toes squeak against the mirror-like floor as she steps out of her tight pants, balancing. The knight from the cantina—Cardo—swears under his breath and grips himself with a crushing urgency.

She's never done this with others obviously watching. The room is a spotlighted stage, a glowing alter meant to illuminate the throne, but it's currently throwing Kuruk's hand into relief as he roughly cups one of her breasts through her dark grey tunic. Impatient, she doesn't need to be fully uncovered to fuck him, and she leaves it on. His other hand works to free his cock, already hard.

Not so long ago, she teased him to escape, using his arousal as a distraction. Here, in front of all the knights, Rey rests her palms on his shoulders and pushes him down deliberately. A filtration system hums, rushing clean, cool air into the cavernous room, and the throbbing between her legs is starting to drip. She's a taker now, and there's no break between the desire and the doing. She lowers herself into Kuruk's lap, and he's quick to grab her hips, steering her so he can slick his cock with her before he’s even in. He's mumbling his gratitude, and telling her about the things he wanted to do to her in the woods, so ready that he's almost incoherent. It doesn't matter what his cock is like, just that it's hard and seated against her and he pulls her down onto it with a shaky groan. To make a sound, to react to the way he's in her, would let some control slip through her fingers, so she doesn't. Instead, she gets the noises from him, keeping her hand on his shoulder, her thumb against one of the plasma bolt shells strapped to his armor.

Cloth and leather rustle and weapons rattle as the other knights touch themselves. From the floor, it's like she's in a cage of five pairs of tensing, muscled legs. Five cocks in fisted hands as they watch her grind into him, Kuruk cradling her ass. He smells like lantern oil and rain.

She rocks her knees hard against the floor, knowing it will bruise but just having to get more of the bounce that's giving them perfect sliding. He's a good fit—rideable and sturdy. The wide head of his cock rubs her, inside, where the others can't see. That's only for the two of them.

Kuruk loses his rhythm with a huff.

“Oh, fuck—”

“Kuruk, don't you _fucking_ dare,” someone warns from behind her.

“I can't...” He's holding Rey to him like she's keeping him afloat. “Sorry.”

“Every time, I swear,” says Ushar. “You fucking suck at this.”

“I'm gonna come so hard. I can't—” Giving up on lasting any longer, he thrusts into her with an untethered wildness. They're watching her take it, their hands faster, and that's getting her close.

“Yeah, fill her up.” Not mocking this time—it's equal parts longing and encouragement, and she knows the voice. Kuruk tenses as he comes, loud and fast, buried in her. Gasping, he gives a few last pumps and pulls her off of him with a separating pop. He lets go, disentangling, and she scowls at the loss, sprawled and left behind and flooded.

“You asshole, she was just about to come.”

“Was she?” He sounds disoriented as he looks up at them from his half-crouch, lost in a post-orgasm haze. His helmet tips back down to her. “You were?”

Vicrul shoves him aside.

“Want to come on my fingers again?” He asks quietly, like it's only for her and they're alone, as he positions himself between Rey's legs, kneeling. Hands ungloved, he's running them along her warm, spread thighs. Rey's whole body feels like it's blushing as she leans back, bracing her hands on the floor behind her, and she can feel all of their eyes on her. She nods, staring at his gridded helmet. He makes her feel unbreakable, and the voracious way she craves what he does is frightening. But maybe it’s alright, here. Even if they’re watching and can see how much of herself she’ll give up just to have it again.

Vicrul eases two of his thick fingers into her and her mouth falls open, eyebrows drawing together when he effortlessly finds the spot inside that she needs him to, and maybe he doesn’t know that he makes it worth it.

“Ah, he stretched you good, didn't he?”

Rey can't speak—just closes her eyes and lets her head fall back. The wet noises are sloppy. Another knight groans softly above her.

“You hear his come in you?”

“Yes.” She grits it out through her teeth. When she opens her eyes, Ushar and Cardo are roughly stroking each other's cocks as they watch. Cardo is so thick that Ushar can't fit his hand around him, but he makes up for it with harsh traction. She wants to be all of their hands, wants to be the thing they fuck. Vicrul's fingers are doing it for them, and she's going to buckle under the need. She'll be there soon, spasming around him. The light overhead is diffused by a grey metallic mesh that leaves its pattern behind her eyelids when she blinks heavily. The knights are so close to her that she can smell the mix of them—smoky sweet blood and dirt. He brings it on fast, gets her sweating and squeezing.

“Does the new Supreme Leader come for us?”

Her toes curl. It's starting.

“I'm...”

“Yeah, you are. Come on and give it to us.”

She knows it's rippling out from her, can feel it wash over them in the Force. Someone standing comes hard, into his cupped hand. She's loud, doesn't care about control now: a full-body shaking, and echoing moaning that tips more of them over the edge. None of it lands on her, instead caught in bunched clothes or hitting the floor with audible drops that she wants to lick up. Vicrul stays with her, letting her wear herself out on him. When Rey slows, she stares blearily as he slides his fingers out, coated with what Kuruk left in her. He's still watching her, reading signals she doesn't know she's sending. It's perfect, the slippery smearing and pressing, and she grinds softly into his hand, shivering as he brings her back down. Even the way he stops feels good.

She's panting, eyes locked on the thin slit in his helmet. He plays her body like an instrument and, soon, she wants to hear all of it.

But not yet.

Rey turns to Kuruk, who's waiting awkwardly by the door like he wants to run away.

“Go to my quarters.”

* * *

“Master, I apologize.”

Without a word to the man standing wide-anchored, with his hands clasped behind him, Rey descends the stairs. Barefoot, she walks into the white-walled room, the hem of her recovered cloak dragging. The door locks behind her.

“It won't happen again,” Kuruk adds stiffly as she tosses the pile of clothes over the back of a curved, thinly padded armchair. Her boots tumble out of her arms and into the seat. Keeping Kylo's harsh furniture clean isn't a priority.

“Did you like it?” she asks.

“I—” He cuts his longer apology off short, surprised. “Of course I did.” Rey waits. He shakes his head slightly, remembering politeness. “Did you?”

“Yes.” She begins to undress completely, her back to him. “And I like to come, too.” Over her shoulder, she shoots him a pointed glance. He's slouched with embarrassment.

“I understand, Master.” His belt is askew.

“Would you like to spend the night?”

Kuruk perks up at that, head lifting. A charmed curiosity jitters through the Force.

“Yes.”

There's something greenly sweet about him, and Rey wants him to be the first she sees.

“I'm going to take a shower. You're welcome to join me if you're comfortable removing your helmet,” she says. Maybe they have a ritual for that, too, but she'd rather do it her own way.

And it's not long after she gets into the glass-enclosed, steaming shower that Kuruk steps in, too. Broad-chested, his body is functionally, touchably muscled. The unexpected pleasantness that Rey picked up on is there in his features: short sandy brown hair, squared chin, and dark blue eyes. And in his smile when he speaks.

“Hi.”

Rey wipes the water from her face, and she knows she's gawking.

“Hi,” she says, suddenly shy. He's not a stranger: he's hers. And his come is still inside of her. But it's a shock to see a face and a body, to hear an unmodulated voice. He's more confident when they're alone like this, too, touching her arm under the warm cascade of water, where she's been holding a dissolving bar of soap to her skin as she stares.

“Can I do it for you, Master?”

“Yes.” Rey wants to wince at how near to a whisper it is. Instead, she draws her shoulders back and clears her throat quickly. Her hair is soaked, sticking to her neck. “You may.”

His hands are strong and thorough, and he's methodically efficient. Only briefly does he pause to press his lips to her shoulder or to run his thumbs over her nipples, slipping through the lather. He gets to his knees to wash her feet, and the ticklish swipes between her toes almost make her kick him reflexively, but he holds her steady until he's finished.

Rey studies his movements as he soaps himself up, wondering with a bit of sadness if he'll rinse away the terrestrial smells she noticed before. Thankfully, something of him lingers after he's done, when he's pulling her back so she leans against his chest under the flow. He reaches around her to touch the points of her hips, to feel the pliant way she eases. Their clean skin has friction beneath the hot water.

“Can I make up for earlier?” Kuruk's voice is muffled in the close air.

“Yes.” She's greedy, and she knows it's okay. Her body responds with generous speed, receptive in the lingering afterglow.

The trailing touches come to rest between her thighs, swirling in the freshly washed hair before he sets his fingers lightly against her clit. She rolls her hips into him, his cock thickening lazily.

“I think about you by yourself,” he says while his hand works her. “I know you were pretending, but the sounds you made...”

He knows what he's doing, and it's winding her up.

“Did you tell the others?”

“Not that part,” he says. “I kept it for myself.” He's adding more pressure, slipping in a finger to feel where he fucked her, where she's slicker than water. With a new lucidity, Rey understands that he was the biggest risk Kylo sent—the first one, who usually maintained his deadly distance with a scope and a slow-squeezed trigger. But not with her. Another orgasm starts to coil, low in her hips.

“What did you tell them?”

“That you were worth not finding,” he says. Her legs are buckling and he keeps her up, his hand steady. “Weren't you, Master?”

In his grasp, she crumbles. A shaking mass of pieces that can't quite get his name out. The water crashes.

“Master. Master.” He's groaning a litany of it into her ear until that is all she is. She is nobody— _nothing—_ but their master.

When it's over, they stand enfolded, motionless under the stream for long minutes until she's ready to get out.

He dries her off in silence, as meticulously as he washed her. It lets her mind wander, gives her time to think about the coming days. Weighty with spectacle, they will follow on the heels of waking up in the Supreme Leader's bed for the first time. Tonight, she hopes that Kuruk's presence will banish Poe's waiting ghost, or at least that he'll soothe her when her friend visits her in pale, cold nightmares.

They relax on the bed for a while before turning the lights off, sleep still miles away, somewhere ahead in the space the First Order fleet slices through.

“You're not what I expected,” Rey admits. She snuggles down into the pillows, barely able to make out the novel shapes of furniture in the dark room.

Kuruk hums with understanding, kneading her back.

“I've been told that before,” he says. She imagines him with a close few others, spending time between their sheets, and it fits.

“You seem nice.”

“I'm not.” The finality and bluntness makes her snort out a laugh. “But sometimes I try.”

“Well, I like the trying,” she says. Rey pulls her hair out of the way so he can massage her neck with stroking circles. Covertly, Rey sniffs her forearm and wonders if the soap's unobtrusive scent had clung to Kylo's skin in the same way.

“You're not what I expected either,” he says. It makes her pause, the first real wisps of doubt gathering. Unforgivable weakness, mistakes in her opening moves. Perhaps a set-in stain of hope that she hasn't been able to wash out yet. But she needs to find out.

“How so?”

“You're terrifying.” He kisses her exposed skin and nuzzles against her neck.

She's got a heavy burden that she's so, _so_ tired of carrying. And there, in the warmth of his arms, she lays it down, just for a little bit. She puts aside her loneliness and horrible strangeness, and lets him hold her, all around her borders.

In the morning, he's gone. But a full mug of caf sits on her nightstand, piping hot. Rey smiles, watching the steam rise.

* * *

Ben pushes food around on his plate, building the bland things into columns and mashing them down with the back of his fork before seasoning them again. On the Resistance base, he eats alone in his quarters when everyone else has gone to bed. He stays up late, working on repairing the lightsaber he took when he escaped, or restoring the corroded stockpile of Republic-era blasters they found at their new hideout. He keeps to himself, partially out of necessity, but mostly it's his preference.

How is he supposed to explain to his mother that _this_ is all his fault, too? That he couldn't get it together enough to tell Rey how he felt, and used the knights as a buffer. He is the exact reason she fell and, in a life full of immeasurable mistakes, failing her is the worst thing he's ever done. Because in the fog where he at least carried a memory of love and a family who missed him, Rey has starvation and wordless abandonment. She will be a reckoning and the blood is already on his hands.

When they're all called into the Strategy Center the following morning to watch the First Order's broadcast, she takes his breath away. Her face is hardly visible beneath a deep hood, just her pale mouth, parted like she's breathing hard. The black dress is high-necked and tight, and he wants to see more of her skin, to know if they've left marks on her. It's every midnight craving he had, every fantasy of what she would look like next to him on a throne. The Knights of Ren flank her, staying close as her new titles are read.

Sickened, Ben leaves the room long before it's over, unable to bear it anymore.

* * *

Vicrul plants a line of kisses down her stomach and dips his head between her legs again, unmasked to bury his face in her. His eyes are dark, watching her over the clipped patch of hair at the apex of her thighs. His tongue is strong as he teases it over her, expert lips adding perfect suction.

Rey throws her head back, digging her fingers into the pillows scattered around her. She'll try not to jerk against his mouth so hard this time. He's been drawing orgasms out of her for what feels like hours: body-wringing, mind-blanking explosions that get closer and closer together, and she wonders if this ends with her paralyzed by a single, continuous release.

She's shaking, helpless against another wave. He drinks it in, kissing and slurping, and it's somehow, wondrously, never too much. He stops right before the edge of frayed nerves and sensitive sharpness, slowing to a languid licking with sweeping touches.

Rey is molten, blissfully limp on the bed, scrubbing her fingers through his hair. Vicrul grins up at her, his nose and soft mouth shining with her wetness. He's handsome in an angular, sculpted way, Rey decides. The smile lights his eyes and creases the outer corners.

Years stretch out between them but she doesn’t mind. She likes a well-traveled path.

“Who taught you how to do that so well?”

“You,” he says diplomatically. He runs his tongue around his mouth as he stands. Until he stepped into her quarters, the only parts of him she'd seen were his hands and his cock. She likes the rest of him, too, hair-darkened and grooved with muscle. A long pink scar wraps around his side, from his back to his stomach, interrupting the wind-swept desert of his skin. He crawls up the bed to flop down next to her.

“Wanna know what I did with my hand after I got back here? After I fucked you?” He's pumping his cock, almost as an afterthought, and Rey watches his arm flex.

“That?”

“No. That was with my other one.” He switches hands to show her, then covers his face and inhales deeply. “It still smelled like you.” His voice, muffled, snags on a groan and he strokes himself faster. “I couldn’t get enough.” He is mouth-watering, and she's no longer shocked by the clutching, feverish way her body reacts to being near him.

Like he can hear her thoughts, he's staring up at her.

“Tell me how rough you like it.”

Even now, with her all over his face, she feels a jab of inhibition. It catches words in her chest and she wants to talk like he does: free-flowing, filthy, and shameless. He'll build worlds for her, just to fuck her in them, but she can't do much more than listen. The honesty is difficult, but it sounds good.

“Can I show you?” she asks instead, her hand hovering near his cock.

He wraps her fingers around him, and pushes up into her touch, so turned on that he's almost in agony. “Yeah, show me.”

Rey starts with firm, steady strokes that shift his skin and make him close his eyes. His tongue keeps running over his bottom lip. Faster, longer pulling that makes him hiss with pleasure.

“You want it like that?” He knows. The question is a spurring. He just wants to hear her say it.

“Yes. Like that.”

Vicrul sits up to reposition. She lets go of him so she can get on all fours, braced and needing him.

“That's going to make it hard to pick,” he warns her. Everywhere he could fuck her is ready, and she wants all of it. But she aches for the way her lips grip him, how he keeps her wet, and he must agree because he's parting her with his fingers and Rey gives a satisfied, sighing moan. “I missed this pussy, though. We'll save the rest for next time. Put your head down so I can see it.”

Rey does it, dropping her chest to the bed, head turned to the side. It's totally exposing, and Vicrul is spreading her and swiping the tip of his cock where he's going to fuck her. His hands on her hips help her meet his pressing, and she's so slippery and yielding from before that he sinks in on the first push, and she almost envies him because the sound that it drags out of him is a replenishment. His thrusts match the constant beat she showed him, a taking that grows. Vicrul skims his hands up her back, fanning them over her shoulders and dragging down her arms. He grips her hands, and with a slight pull, she's locked in the position.

“That's a good girl,” Vicrul says. She's panting, and his thumbs graze her wrists, reassuring, but his pace doesn't slow. “You like getting fucked in his bed?” Guilt, defiled and scorching, trips through her. It's only for a few days and they weren't supposed to notice. “You haven't changed the sheets. Still smells like him.”

Rey gasps, drawing in the faded scent of him. It's a hideous thing: to be swarmed with them all day but needing to smell someone who isn't there at night. To cram a pillow between her knees and tell herself that it's just because it's comfortable, ignoring how she needs to rut against it. To find a silky stray hair, black and long against the white fabric, and tickle it across her skin while Vicrul's mouth is on her.

Like before, he finds her deceit and feeds her what's true, sweetened by lust and understanding.

“Do you have any idea how much he fucking wanted you?” Hearing it now that Kylo's gone and they're fucking in the remnants of his bedroom feels different. It's gloating, a vindication of her pain. “He was stupid with it. Totally cunt-drunk.”

She knows. She knew all along and it's villainous but she loved every second of it.

Vicrul releases her wrists and tugs her legs back, pulling them out from under her so she collapses onto her stomach. Knees spread wide over her, he plunges in, rougher. Hands on her ass, lifting to watch how he's fucking her. She snakes her fingers beneath her hip to get to her clit, breathing in Kylo and feeling Vicrul embedded in her.

“We're going to pump you so full of come.” Vicrul growls it, more of an animal promise than a threat, like it’s hardly his choice. “Is that what you need?” Rey tries to answer, but it's a wordless thing. Her fingers move faster. It's true. When they come in their hands or it drips onto the floor, it's a waste. It should be in her. It belongs to her. “That's why you're here. You need six cocks, don't you?”

“Fuck.” It gets out through her clamped jaw, because he's saying the truest things.

“Yeah, that's okay. That's good. You like that cock older than you? Like it when we know what we’re doing.” He’s near secret things that she thinks about to get her over the edge when she’s alone, and she could choke on the need. “Come on us any time you want. Just use us. You deserve it. We're so fucking hard for you, you have no idea.”

He slows almost to a stop, with a low sound and long exhales. Close. He's got a disciplined control of his body, though, and won't lose himself until he's ready. When he starts again, it's with fresh hunger. Her belly is pressed between his cock and the mattress, a rubbing pressure.

“Want us to knock you up? You won't know who did it, with all our come mixed in you.” He's rougher, when he thinks about that. “Fuck, I want it to be me. Don't even want kids. I just need you to hold my come in this tight pussy until I'm part of you. I want to be _in_ you.” She's slipping: tipping her hips up so he can get deeper, pushing back to meet his driving thrusts. “You're going to fuck it out of me, Rey. Keep doing that.” Her name is a shock, and it makes her moan. “Can I call you Rey?” Her cheek is against the bed, but she nods. He leans down and she can almost see him, until he puts his lips close to her ear. “Rey. You know what you're doing? You're making me want to keep you.”

She closes her eyes, feeling his breath on her skin. His teeth scraping lightly over her shoulder, his mouth lingering on the back of her neck when he talks.

“You can say his name.” She squeezes her eyes shut harder, fingers almost punishingly fast on her clit. “Want to call me Kylo?” It's close. “Ben?”

Rey tries not to clench at the name, but her body responds faster than she does. Vicrul's inhale is sharp through his teeth.

“Good girl. There it is.” He's to the hilt in her. “You've got a new secret.”

Here she can pretend. It's safe with him, to let the shields fail while he's in her. To disintegrate. She lets Ben's bed cradle her, lets the smooth way Vicrul is touching her be him. Lets the come that's going to be in her be his. She reaches behind her to touch his leg, hopes that the Force won't connect them while she says it. She can't block that while she's thinking about him fucking her.

On the precipice, it tips out of her mouth. “Ben.”

“That's right, Rey.” He strokes her hair, fucks her steadily. “You're so good. Say it again.”

“Ben.” It's a soul-shivering resonance, out loud. To feel a lunging, warm body as she says it, imagining Ben sweating behind her.

“I'm going to come,” she tells him.

“Come on his cock.”

Rey fists her hand in the sheets, so close. One little push—

“I've seen his,” Vicrul says, confidential and sordid. “Want me to tell you about it?”

And that—just the offer of it—is enough. It's loud, a room-filling and unbound thing that she sobs and hiccups. Vicrul has been waiting and uses her release to bring his own with slow grinding, and he's completely buried when he spills into her.

He doesn't collapse onto her when he's finished, as easy as it would be. He presses a kiss to her spine and scoops her into his arms before he rolls over, taking her with him. Rey laughs, breathless, as he stays inside of her, letting her lie back on him. Like a vanishing illusion, a mirage that they can blink away, the traitorous seriousness of things they said is forgotten in the glow. Vicrul is brushing his finger around where his cock is still seated in her, softening where their bodies meet, caressing where he was rough, and it draws a contented sigh from her.

“I can't actually get pregnant,” Rey reminds him. The knights were in the room when the medical droid drew her blood and loudly, _instantly_ announced her blood type and the presence of her fertility suppressant before she demanded that it stop reading out her entire results. Vicrul is smelling her hair, his nose jammed into the side of her neck, tickling along her hairline. Rey wriggles at the huffing.

“I know.” His voice is pleasure-soaked and dreamy.

She doesn't need to ask him to spend the night. It's a foregone conclusion that they've both already arrived at. He's comfortable to be around, an easy and unchallenging companion. After a surreal day of crowds and holocams, it's exactly what she wants.

He lets her slide off of him and snuggle close to his side, her arm draped over him. The scattering of hair presses against her face and he smells like something cozy and resinous that makes her want to live in bed with him. Late mornings and skipped meetings. Not a home, but a place to rest for a while. He combs his fingers over her skin.

“Forget anyone who leaves you,” he says. It's kind, an unjudging addendum to the things they said while he was inside of her. There's a protectiveness that makes her wonder if he knows about her parents, too.

She lifts her head to look up at him.

“I'm trying.” Really, she is. Outside of this room. She didn't think about Ben at all during the ceremony, and she won't think about him in the refresher as she rinses the sweat and come off of her.

Vicrul's fast kisses to her temple form a pattern, bouncing her head slightly to the rhythm. “You hungry, scavenger?” he asks against her skin. “Let's order something.”

“And have the sheets changed,” she adds as she props herself up, hoping too late that it doesn't sound like an order. She doesn't need that here, with him.

“If you want to. Doesn't bother me.”

When the food arrives, Rey follows the droid in. Before it can unclip from the tiered repulsorlift cart it’s pushing, Rey grabs a palm-sized blue blob, unfamiliar and cold, and she crams the entire thing into her mouth without a second thought. It's soft, gel-filled. Deliciously sweet.

Vicrul's eyebrows lift in surprise before he blinks it back, his expression softening. When he speaks, it’s cushioned with understanding.

“You've had some bad luck, haven't you?”

Cheeks full, Rey thinks about that as she chews. It's not chance: she's been forgettable for a long time, abandoned in the background of bigger things. She gulps down the bite, studying the droid's efficient movements as it changes the bedding.

“I'm here now.” It's the closest she's willing to get to an answer. Won’t meet his eyes.

And Vicrul's emotions are a twisting contradiction—sadness and pride and affection.

“Yeah, you are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cannot even believe I'm saying this, but the absurdly talented [@HouseOfFinches](https://twitter.com/HouseOfFinches) drew Rey/Vicrul. It is very hot and NSFW and can be found [here on twitter](https://twitter.com/HouseOfFinches/status/1329420831479508994).
> 
> I will never fully recover.


	2. Settled

The scavenging doesn't stop, just because she's the Supreme Leader.

Kylo's closet is full of supple leather, padded tunics, and flowing capes which become her tabards and leggings and dresses. She modifies his lightsaber to be more comfortable to hold—narrower in her hand and with a rebalanced blade length. Albrekh resizes the helmet in his workshop, patching it over with pieces of Darth Vader's mask where the welds are weak, and it turns into something less sleek and more fearsome—fanged and uneven.

Rey is tall enough that moving through the halls with her heavy boots on, armored and masked, she fits in with the knights. When she wears a belted black velvet gown to fight off the constant chill of the _Steadfast_ , letting her hips swing as she walks and knowing they're all watching, she is new-risen royalty.

She'll never acknowledge that Kylo is a nipping at her heels, an unease in her mind. She does her best to keep the memory of him far away, but he's a breeze that won't stop catching her hair in quiet moments. With his clothes wrapped around her and his knights protecting her, Rey has never been nearer to him, and even though he doesn't really want her, she can have this. Searching inexhaustibly for him, she stands everywhere he stood, and it feels like touching him.

The bond is open on her end, except when she's alone in bed. That's when she keeps the light on, wonders if he ever stared at the same panel on the sloping wall when he made himself come, and adds a third finger for how he would fill her. She blocks the connection because sometimes his name is there in her unformed, unplanned pleading.

There's nothing from him but silence. She doesn't worry: it's stillness, not absence. But it hurts, and she doesn't know why. She did the same to him once, after all.

* * *

One afternoon, after a dully exhaustive tour of a new TIE prototype and a quick sparring session with Cardo and Kuruk, the remainder of the knights return from a routine patrol that took longer than expected. They're hovering around something small, craning their necks to get a look.

Rey tugs off her gloves and stretches her shoulders, waiting. She gives them privacy: on their ship, in their conversations, behind their helmets. In their minds. Curiosity restrained, she trusts them to come to her when they're ready.

Finally, Trudgen steps forward, nominated to do the work of speaking to her. She only knows his voice through the slats of metal over his mouth.

“Master, we'd like to give you something.”

Rey stops swinging her exercise-loosened arms to approach.

He's holding a white sphere and hands it to her without ceremony. Behind him, Vicrul bumps the end of his fist to his forehead, like a careful plan has already gone awry and the moment irreparably ruined. Rey gives him a quick smile.

“Thank you,” she says sincerely. Receiving gifts is such a rare thing that it almost doesn't matter what it is. But they're watching expectantly, and there must be more to it. She inspects the duraplast ball, searching for a latch or clasp.

“Sorry—” Trudgen reaches over and points to a hairline crack that she hadn't noticed, the outline of a square button in the middle. “Just push that.”

With a click, the sphere opens smoothly, revealing a gleaming black gem in a polished metal setting. The ring is deceptive in its simplicity, the level of skill involved apparent to anybody familiar with metalwork. Rey sets her jaw, swallowing hard so she won't cry.

“It's an Oshiran sapphire,” Trudgen is explaining. And Rey sees it—a blue so dark that it appears black from almost every angle. It's cut to follow the natural shape, irregular facets glinting as she tips the case from side to side, admiring.

“The metal is from Jakku,” Trudgen finishes. Rey brushes her fingertips wistfully over it. It's been worked until the sand-pitted surface is transformed. She can't blink back the tears fast enough, and they're spilling down her cheeks by the time she tries the ring on. It's sunburnt and parched lips finally quenched, an unexpected generosity that she hasn't had time to prepare for. She's had jewelry before, when she was younger—faded yarn she knotted into soft bracelets that got dirty, fine braided wires worn around her neck at the end of long days to feel better than the lack that dominated her life. But this is something else: lasting, and beautiful on purpose.

Trudgen touches her arm tentatively, worried, but she waves him off.

“I'm fine.” She's dabbing her cheek with the back of her hand. “I just...” She looks over at the knights. “Thank you.”

There are nods in return and, on her finger, the ring has the weight of forgiven planets.

* * *

Cardo's the only knight in the claustrophobic private debriefing room near her quarters, leaning against a cable access panel. Waiting. It's not an ambush—she knew it was just him before she walked in, a few minutes early for the usual meeting. He must like the hunt because this has been building for days. Bouts of sparring that end with her trapped by his powerful body, and a slow, covert thrust against her thigh so she can feel the size of his cock. Lingering stares from behind his helmet when she speaks to them. An ominous, hulking presence right behind her when they stride down corridors.

She's been goading him with backward glances and post-training stretching that spreads her, letting him imagine that her limber legs are parted for him. It's a chase, one that could've ended with him catching her with her guard down as she rounded a corner, or dragging her into a utility closet when he needed it too badly to wait. Tantalized by the wanted threat of it, every unfamiliar sound the ship makes is him getting closer. He's in every pitch-black, unused room of the command bridge as she passes by, and it's getting difficult to concentrate over the spiking buzz of adrenaline.

The door shuts, and they are alone.

“I thought you'd want an audience.” Rey moves down the narrow room, swiping a single finger along the length of the black table as she goes. In front of him, she stops. It was always going to be like this with him when it finally happened and, as she turns around and bends over, she's not sure who has really been doing the hunting. Her arousal is a watery, aching slip as she drags up the hem of her black, floor-brushing dress. There's nothing underneath.

“I'm adaptable.” A moving armory, stomping boots. He positions himself and Rey braces for the ferocious thing that they're going to do, spontaneous and messy.

He's enormous. And not one for long preparations. His first thrusts are shallow, not to ease into her or to see if he'll fit but just to wet his cock enough to cram himself inside. With a brutal push, he buries himself in her. Rey digs her nails into the table with a gasping whimper that gets guttural and all of her becomes where he is. Her ring reflects the lights overhead.

Cardo growls and drives himself into her again. She can't take his whole length, not yet and maybe not ever, and he bottoms out with a hiss, jerking her hips hard into the edge of the table, buffered by the bunched fabric of her dress.

“Gonna wreck this. Won't fucking walk right for days.”

She won't beg for it, but it's on the tip of her tongue: she craves the bruises, needs the bite of too much.

“Got a _good_ cunt. Should've fucked you on that table.” In a crowded bar, a dingy alcove. His huge cock plunging into her small body and she never would've been able to hide what was happening.

Rey squirms, to brace her hand wider for support, but he bends her arm behind her back and slams her down, flat against the table. Her breasts press and her tied-up hair is coming loose.

It feels like he's fucking her whole body, like she's a sleeve splitting apart on him at the seam.

The door slides open and the rest of the knights enter, wordlessly taking their usual seats like their master isn't a seeping, stuffed hole. Like the sounds aren't Cardo's jingling belt buckle and their smacking skin and the untamed noises she's making into the tooth-dented back of her own balled fist. Hers is the only exposed face, her legs bare above her boots. Their Force signatures fog the room.

They've all seen this before, but it's different with him. Displayed and pinned, the way he's fucking her feels like revenge. They're both sweating beneath the lights and under their armor and dark clothes. Cardo releases her arm but grabs her shoulder, and uses it to drive her back onto him. It's quiet except for them and Rey does try to swallow the wild way she's been crying out, but it escapes anyway. Drool sticks her cheek to the smooth table and she closes her eyes because she loves how he's punishing her with his cock, but can't look at the packed room, full of knights who don't do it like this.

Trudgen's seat is across the narrow table, by her head, and it's like she's getting fucked in his lap.

He runs his ungloved fingers through her hair, keeping the sticking strands out of her face. Carefully swipes the spit from her cheek and the back of her hand. She peers up at him. Only him.

“Just a little more,” he tells her. “Can you do that?”

Rey gasps, nodding. She feels ripped in half differently now, part of her essential, worshiped by one while another mercilessly uses the rest of her. She needs both. And she needs them all to see that she can be taken like this. Cardo locks a bruising grip on her hips.

“Tell me what it's like,” Trudgen says. He's rubbing her back comfortingly, and the gentle prying skips down her spine because she knows he likes this.

“So big.” Cardo's thrusts knock the words out of her in erratic cadences. “So big, I—” It's impossible to describe the way he's slamming into the end of her, and finding some hidden spot there that makes it feel like she can never get enough. Or how the tight-swinging slap of him is hitting her clit. That something feral in her wants him to come so deep that it's more in her belly than between her shaking legs.

“Hold her arms,” Cardo grates out.

Trudgen's touch, pulling her wrists together and grasping them, is gentle.

He brings his head down, close to her ear to whisper.

“You're ruining him. Hear it? He'll never come this hard for the rest of his life. You're it.”

Rey writhes, twisting in his hold. She's going to shatter.

“Yeah, keep doing that,” Cardo snarls from behind her, voice broken even through the echo of his helmet.

He grabs her thigh, bending her knee and shoving until it's up on the table beside her and she's splayed, lifted from the ground by the strength of his thrusts. When he's taking her like this, bracketed and crushing, it's easy to pretend that he is in charge.

“I'm going to come.” She can hear the surprise in her own words. That being ridden so hard is going to get her off. She expected it later, alone in a hot shower, when she touched herself where she was sore. But this is a ravening thing with a life of its own.

“Let me hear.” Trudgen says it like it's the first thing he's ever wanted.

She comes on Cardo's cock with sobbing shouts that she can't control, too stretched to squeeze him any tighter. He's grunting, ramming into her until he's coming too, pumping and seeding her and she takes it all, through her own earned aftershocks. When he's done, he stumbles back and Trudgen releases her hands, stroking where he held her.

But Cardo isn't done. Behind her, he's wrenching off his helmet and shedding his gloves. His bare fingers dip into her and hold her open so that her dampness and his come can trickle out in a warm coursing that he catches and smears on his cock. He runs his shaft along her; for a moment, Rey thinks he might fuck her again but he's getting to his knees. His tongue is a blazing stroking and then a prodding that scoops. Hungrily buried in her, and his breath swells over her saturated skin and between everywhere he's spreading her with calloused hands. Rey hides her face under her arm, melting into the quieting, placating sensation of his mouth and nose. Trudgen outlines each of her fingers with soft tracing and she can forget her audience.

When Cardo's done with where he had her, he drags his tongue up to the entrance he didn't use. Kissing and flat-tongued laving that makes him groan against her. His lapping gets slower, like he only wants to taste her here and Rey gives a contented sigh. She's glad he caught her.

After he pulls away, his helmet goes back on before she sees his face and, once again, she is the only one unmasked. Rey lets her knee drop from the table and straightens, dress falling down over her legs. In the expectant silence that follows, the textured hide of Cardo's armor flaps down and he takes his seat. Rather than addressing what just happened, Rey readjusts her belt.

“Apologies for the late start.” It doesn't sound sincere because she's not at all sorry.

They nod, and as she smooths the front of her dress, she wonders what their hands do beneath the table. She's the last to join them, sinking gingerly into her chair. Vicrul taps a few buttons and brings up a holomap.

Squinting at it, Rey tries to slow her breathing to something more suitable for a meeting. The last drops of Cardo's come are draining into the folds of her dress and she's already lusciously sore.

“Has this been updated after the newest reconnaissance report?” she asks.

“Yes, Master.”

The chamber door buzzes. The knights are on their feet in an instant, weapons raised and fingers trained beside ready triggers.

Allegiant General Pryde enters and inclines his head politely in a semblance of a bow. He sniffs and, almost imperceptibly, wrinkles his nose. Rey remains in her seat.

“Ma'am, I was hoping to speak to you privately.”

Rey's gaze is unflinching. “You are.”

Pryde casts a cursory glance around the room, at the knights surrounding her, and at her disheveled hair and still-warm cheeks. Her lips are florid and plush from her orgasm.

“I see.” He clasps his hands behind him and clears his throat before continuing. “Ma'am, as you know, when you arrived we conducted a routine physical examination and submitted your blood sample for a complete analysis.”

“Yes.” Rey conceals her confusion. No part of that involved him. At her wave, the knights sit, all creaking leather and metallic scraping.

“While we're still waiting for official confirmation, it appears that your family is far more illustrious than we originally thought.” He's looking at her now with something closer to admiration. Amusement, even.

In fact, he's as close to delighted as she's ever seen him.

“It seems,” he says with obvious relish, “that you are a direct descendant of the late Emperor.”

Her stomach drops. Ears ringing, she's at one end of a tunnel, her fraudulent body commandeered.

No—she is nobody, and the only place for her is the one that she has taken. The one she has carved out with bloodied fingernails and stilled lungs. Her power will be confiscated, distorted until it's no longer hers; her abandonment cast as some kind of mercy, some _misunderstanding_.

She will suck every molecule of oxygen from the room if she needs to.

“Get out.” Each word enunciated like daggers.

General Pryde's expression falters.

“Supreme Leader, I served the Emperor and it would be an honor—”

“I said get out!” She slams her hand down hard on the table, its immaculate surface still heated where she was pressed against it moments before.

Pryde lunges for the door, leaving a murky trail of terror in his wake. She is monstrous, and will not let anybody hollow her out with stories about why she's here or how she's strong.

It's silent: no rattling blades or even the dull brush of clothing. Farther down the table, Cardo is stock-still, the rise and fall of his chest stuck on an exhale.

“Do not discuss my family.” Rey curls her tingling fingers around the arms of her chair. The command is a familiar one to the knights. “Ever.”

She storms out, not waiting to hear the end of the rumbling chorus of “Yes, Master.”

* * *

It's not long before the Force connects them. Rey is alone in her quarters, wearing only a long, sheer black robe. The reverberation is familiar, as is the surge of annoyance she feels as she turns to face him. She knows her body only is only partially obscured, pale beneath the drape, but she won't give him the satisfaction of watching her scramble to cover herself.

They regard each other cautiously. She tells herself that he's the same as he always was, but it's not true and she will never admit that he's like ice held in her mouth on a sweltering afternoon.

“I saw you on the HoloNet,” Ben says finally. “You look like you haven't slept in days.”

“There are six of them.” All she wants to do is hurt him. All over again, in ways only she can, so she is distant and uninterested.

Instead of taking the bait, he wipes his mouth to hide a smile but it reaches his eyes, and Rey can't believe how different he looks, even in that simple movement. He's radiant, with his own gravity—a new sun she needs to orbit. Wearing a loose and long-sleeved shirt, with a holstered blaster slung low around his hips, he looks free. Expressive in a way she's never seen before, like he removed another mask.

The searching glance he gives her has an uncovered affection in it.

“Are you safe?” he asks.

She crosses her arms over her chest, irritated at the question and how he's acting like they're anything remotely like friends. “Are you?”

He shrugs. “Probably not.”

“Are you with the Resistance?”

“No.” A lie, surely, judging by the standard-issue holster, but he's concealing the canted flit of deceit so she can't sense it. Somehow, it's only in this moment that she understands the riotous danger that is the son of Leia Organa and Han Solo. It's no matter, though. She likes a challenge.

“You've been blocking the connection,” Rey says. It's an accusation and a question. She's been ripping through maps to find the places he might be. The list is long but, for this, she's patient. Because when she finds him, she will drink every drop of him until all that's left is a husk that wants her.

He rubs the back of his neck, wincing a little. He seems tired, too, but in the tranquil, hard-working way that she used to have herself at night. A memory of a past life.

“Yeah,” he says.

An explanation doesn't come, but she waits anyway. She wants to hear that he's scared of her, that she hurts to look at. That he's sorry.

Instead, Ben nods to her hand, noticing the ring.

“Did they give you that?”

“Yes.”

Mouthwateringly complicated things play across his face and she needs them all. Settling on something, he gives her a sympathetic look.

“Rey, it's just sex to them.”

She wants to lounge in it: how hard he's trying, how much he doesn't understand. How it hasn't even occurred to him that sex might be all _she_ wants, that she came here specifically to use them. And more delicious than any of that...

“You sound jealous,” she says, letting her arms fall to her side. The ring scratches slightly against the gossamer fabric of her robe.

Ben straightens, and somehow, she's forgotten his height. His broadness.

“Why would I be jealous? I've been in your head.” His tone is matter-of-fact but there's a boast in the words: that nobody has been more inside of her than him. That they can't get that deep, as much and as hard as they fuck her.

She twirls the loose end of the robe's satin sash around her finger absently.

“I see Ben Solo is just as arrogant as Kylo Ren.” She's pleased by the way he grimaces at the name. But maybe it was true, once. Before she gave up on ever being with him. As clearly as she can, she mentally flings the jumbled memories at him—her confused terror when he captured her in the forest, her joy evaporating in Snoke's throne room like water poured onto heated metal. The final, heartrending night spent wishing he would just come find her himself.

He presses his lips together, eyes shining. The apology that comes isn't words. It's a cloudburst and an incandescent deluge that almost sweeps her away, but so gentle when it gets to her that it paves the floor where she stands barefoot, like sea foam. It's a bending humility and an empty-handed offering that fixes nothing at all but names every wrong. It stings her eyes and fills her nose, spills into her ears and brushes her fatal hands.

“You can always come back,” Ben says.

And a hidden part of her, fortified and preserved, wants to believe it. But she's so much smarter than that now.

“Is that what they told you?” It's caustic and she's sick of him pretending that making a few apologies to people he's destroyed has healed anything. She imagines walking past him in the dark, the only light coming from far behind her, where he's headed. Clipped beside the blaster at his hip is the lightsaber that she left broken.

“That's what I'm telling you.”

“And who's going to be there? I killed Poe, Ben. I'm sure Leia—” It hurts too much to say: that Leia probably wishes Rey were dead. That Finn will never want to think about her again. Chewbacca, Rose, Kaydel.

“Me, Rey. I'll be here. No matter what you do.”

Another lie.

“You _left_ me. I came to you, and you left me. Why would I believe you?”

Ben studies her face and takes a step closer. “What did you see when we touched hands?”

Rey feels her nose scrunch as she moves back, furious that he would bring it up. “That was a trick. _You_ did that. It won't work again.”

“I didn't.”

She hates him. His hypocrisy, his stubborn fresh hope. His self-righteousness.

“You lied to me. You told me I was nobody.”

“That's not what I meant, Rey. I—”

“So you knew?”

“Knew what?”

She wants to scream.

“Who my grandfather was.”

He looks like he's going to be sick.

“Is that true? I heard rumors but I didn't think...”

Didn't think she'd ever find out. But she has, and the things he said were all such obvious grasping that she should have known better.

“I can't believe I ever loved—” Rey catches it, just in time. She's not even sure where the word came from, because she never did.

It's not just in time though, because he can feel it.

“Rey.”

She turns and walks out, severing the connection.

* * *

Trudgen lands a hit, his secondary blade glancing off of her vambrace. They're not really trying, and it only leaves her knuckles abraded and raw. Rey hisses at the sting and the frustration, shaking it out. She's distracted. The knights withdraw, spacing out again in the brightly lit training room they use for sparring.

The quarterstaff she throws to the floor with a rattle isn't like her old one. It's heavier, upgraded to thrum and pulse with energy when she switches it on. She pulls the lightsaber from her belt and waves it to the other side of the room, where it floats down to rest on a folded mat. She needs focus and risk. Real, kinetic danger.

Face bare, she addresses all the knights. So they can see her and hear her and know that it's really her.

“I order you to kill me.”

“Master.” Kuruk looks between her and the discarded lightsaber. “That's not—”

“I said _do it_ ,” Rey snarls, glaring at them as she moves into the center of the space, marked by an etched First Order insignia on the textured floor. She doubts they ever once objected to the order when Kylo gave it. If she could froth at the mouth, she would—nearly salivating at the black hole of rage in the middle of her. They think she's helpless because she fucks them on tables and in front of a vacant throne. Because she's smaller and younger. Because she's not Kylo.

The Knights of Ren circle her—an ingrained, deadly, synchronized drawing in. Fear and anger whirls through them, eagerness and reluctance split asymmetrically and she doesn't mind any of it. It's the horde she first saw in the depths of the castle on Takodana, a vision of a clustered threat.

Thick white smoke billows, and through it, they're not all aiming at her. Vicrul gives his scythe a performative swing at her, a glint in the haziness, but then he's keeping his hand low, pointing a blaster at Cardo. Ushar tries to shove her with the Force, to knock her off balance, but her feet are rooted in place, buttressed for it from any angle.

Like a wire he doesn't know he tripped in the confusion, it's the barrel of Cardo's arm canon, aimed at the aliveness of her chest, and the fast click of the flamethrower charging up inside that sets her off. With a flick of her wrist, the entire room detonates. The enormous blast wave throws them all to the floor, and sends them skittering away from her, weapons knocked from their hands. Alarms scream and a sprinkler system drops nozzles from the high ceiling, drenching everything. The smoke dissipates, a battlefield extinguished.

“We'll practice blocking,” she suggests.

She walks by one soaked figure.

“Ap'lek, I'll take you in my quarters.”


	3. Deeper

“You hesitated.”

“Yes.”

Their clothes drip onto the floor of her quarters, making puddles around their boots. The sound is steady and soothing, like they're standing outside after a downpour.

She's not angry. The disorienting, shielding smoke was his work, released from the canister that's always at his waist. Ap'lek's battered helmet is starting to seem like his real face, but she knows he's underneath, distant in the anonymity. She's only ever seen his hand, as he interlaced his fingers with hers while he pressed against her and into her. A map of his scars remains in her mind, healed lines of nicks and scratches, and she unrolls it when she feels alone, to trace onto her body where she wishes he would touch her.

Ap'lek takes a small step into her bedroom and waits, with that reserve that has made Rey think about him since their first encounter. In a group, he's the magnetic watchfulness on the periphery and she finds her attention returning to him too often to hide from the others. She searches his rare, measured words for accented hints of a home planet or references that she could triangulate, but he is only unknown. Her imagination runs wild, but nothing has made her want him more than the simple fact that he could be anyone. When they spar, his intentions are blurred; his feints and precise full-strength strikes vibrate her bones and keep her on edge. She has half expected to find him lurking silently in her refresher, slipped past sensors and security droids. But it's only at her command that he's here now.

They're in the innermost room of her private quarters, windowless and protected. The bed she left rumpled in the morning has been remade, sheets tucked tightly. There's a confessional hush in the air and she has never listened harder.

“The others think I did something that night to turn you.” Prideless, and it the most he's ever said to her.

“You did.” Her sodden undertunic clings to her back.

She's surprised by the intense regret that pours from him. In the Force, it's a sharp, splitting bolt, even as he tries to insulate it.

“I didn't want to leave,” he says, so quiet that it's almost inaudible. He moves nearer.

Rey holds her ground. “I didn't want you to.”

She could tell him it wasn't the leaving that did it: it was the gentleness. It was the realization that a nameless stranger gave more thought to her than Kylo ever did.

“He ordered me not to hurt you,” Ap'lek says. “If I didn't kill you.”

It's like she's underwater, sinking fast with emptied lungs and too scared to breathe in, because it will drown her if she does. Everywhere it shouldn't be.

“Why would he do that?”

“I think you know, Master.” Another slow step.

“Always call me Rey when we're alone.” Something else to focus on. Something sure and solid. She needs to get away from the reflective, eroding thing Ap'lek has held up to her. He's within arm's reach, covered but profoundly hers, even where she can't see.

“Rey.” He sweeps a soaked strand of her hair behind her ear and a cold droplet hangs, then falls. The loosened collar she lets hang open catches the drip at her collarbone. “He cared.”

“He didn't,” she says acidly, pulling back toward the wall. Ap'lek doesn't react, and she's unsure if she can explain just how little he ever cared about her. “He sent six people to kill me.”

“I never said he was good at it.”

Something blooms in her chest and she doesn't know who it's for. She's only sure that uncounted hours stretch out in front of her, now that she has Ap'lek here. If he needs it like she does, they can unwrap each other with intentional unhurriedness while she forgets all of the ways Ben disappointed her. Because that's all she's been craving.

“I don't want to think about him.” She gets close again. Touches a tiny pool of water caught in a fold of his cloak at his shoulder and watches the rivulet trickle down his chest.

Ap'lek inclines his head in acknowledgment, and the restraint of it only amplifies her appetite. Slowly, he pulls her hand away and she's worried she's done something wrong and he'll correct her, but he just inspects the bloodied scrapes on her knuckles.

“Bacta?” He reaches for the pouch that hangs from his belt.

She can let go of pain here. She can lay it at his feet and pretend she doesn't need it to keep going. Because he gives her quieter things and, for a while, it's enough to be taken care of. Even if he doesn't really mean it. Duty and the beginnings of loyalty, maybe, but none of the things with bigger names that could ruin them both.

“Yes, thank you.”

The spray is fine and warm when it hits her skin, and takes away the burning sting she was already used to. The superficial injuries knit together, but she's studying him instead.

“You can take your helmet off,” Rey says. “If you want.”

Suddenly inexperienced again, she picks nervously at dripping edge of her tunic and backs up to give him clearance. He's so uncharted, and she only has unplanned requests and a tongue-catching anticipation. But it will be better than the daydreaming that gives her inexplicable hope.

He pushes his hood back and with a practiced twisting pull, he removes the helmet. And he's so distractingly handsome that Rey immediately regrets it. Brown eyes, honeyed and dark-lashed. Short black hair. A strong jaw and full lips. She expected the seriousness and the sensuousness, but the intensity of his gaze still steals her breath. This is so close to a mistake, and she wants to rewind the past few seconds, to go back to wondering instead of knowing. But it's too late and he can never be a stranger again, or creep back out of her memory. All that's left is the having.

“Please.” She'll beg if she has to, for that carefulness she tore across the galaxy to get. “Do what you want.”

With him in her room, between her and the only escape, she feels more hunted than ever. His measured movements are painstakingly slow, and when he draws up so close to her again, pulling off his gloves, it's more like prowling. But his eyes are fast-flicking, like he's making calculations she can't understand and, finally, he's staring at her lips. Her chest rises and falls quickly as he leans in, head dipping low.

“Are you sure?” His undistorted voice brushes over her neck, frictionless and promising.

Alone with him, a sudden, chilling thought ribbons down her legs: that he was careful with her only because he was ordered to. That, in the absence of an injunction, he would have been different—deadly unmuzzled and without a leash. Sneaking into her and slashing cleanly where she's vulnerable, all while she stood transfixed.

She nods, unable to form words. His thumb, warm, skims along her cheek, from her chin to her ear and he tips her head back, cradling. The fear—no longer that he'll hurt her, because she wouldn't mind, but that he'll stop touching her—is a shivering, tense thing, and Rey gulps hard. His nose first, pressing and inhaling her scent. Rey closes her eyes, lost in the lift of it. Then his lips, dragging like a whisper of silk. Hazily, far away, he catches her wrist and rocks his fingers until the tips are seated against her fluttering pulse. Somehow he gets closer still, pushing her up against the wall with a shaky inhale. His leg slides between hers, and when his tongue finds the heartbeat tucked in the unguarded groove of her neck, he grinds against her. The tiny sob is from Rey, who can't tell if he's taking something or giving it.

He's a thing that's happening to her. Every touch feels like a question. His hands rove, snagging on her soaked clothes and her subtle curves, until his fingers lace through the wrapped closure of her tunic to find her humid skin. Just beneath her breast band, he's feeling her muscles and the buried ridges of her ribs and Rey fidgets at the tickling search of it. She has to be bare, has to have him be the weight on top of her, but he's a savorer and he'll get them there with time. His mouth moves, then a lip-covered catch of her earlobe, and a kiss nestled into the sensitive dip just below that makes her gasp. She presses her fingers flat against herself through wet fabric for some relief where she's throbbing, the just-healed back of her hand knocking against his thigh. He draws back enough to watch her fingers working, and when he raises his head again, it's so he can stare at her mouth.

Such a careful inching, so many chances to stop him while her stomach flips. Because he's going to do something they can't take back, a crossed bridge and an unlocked hatch. His lips land softly at the very corner of her mouth, still testing. When she doesn't pull away, he presses again, to edge closer to what he really wants. Their lips meet and the chaste kiss is defiled by her moan and his answering thrust, and he does it again. And again. His hunger builds, but he won't deepen the kisses. He won't part his lips or use his tongue, and Rey needs him so much that she could crawl up the walls. Her unbuckled belt clinks, and Ap'lek is helping her with slow hands that untie and peel and drop it all onto the floor in a heavy, saturated pile. Unstrapped boots and shed, clinging pants. Filtered air on her damp, goosebumped skin. She promised herself unhurried, but lonely things drive her and she shoves his oiled cloak back from his shoulders. Everything that wasn't covered by the protective fabric is waterlogged. There are flames he doesn't know he's stoking, and she can't name what she wants from him. Just more. Always more. Feverishly, she struggles with the fastenings of his serrated gauntlets, blinking back the mist of frustrated tears when she can't find the clips.

He makes a subdued, pacifying shushing sound in her ear, the Force around him fuzzed and safe, until her arms hang limp at her sides. She's watching him undress, tamed and lulled. Hidden, lightweight armor beneath his tunic, layers she didn't expect, but he's done this so many times that it's an effortless flow. When he's finished, he draws her into him, pressing her naked body against his, and it's Rey's turn to let her hands wander. She traces the muscles of his back, the veins that lace his arms, all tight skin over a fight-hardened physique. His cock is rigid against her and she wants to feel him come apart.

Slowly, eyes locked onto hers, he kneels in front of her. Outlines her thighs, caresses her stomach. Rests his fingers against the thin, sensitive skin along the inside crease of her hip, just at the edge of what she needs. She rolls into his touch with more than a little thrill of having him at her feet. Like kissing her mouth, he approaches gradually and there's no doubt about what he's going to do. Rey shifts, standing with her legs wider, and when his lips meet her, it's with a delicacy that ignites. Toes curled, Rey runs her fingers through his hair. When he buries his nose in her, there's a flash of a need to apologize for sweat and training and a long day, but she can feel his groan and the rinsing strength of his tongue and she is craved completely. He latches his mouth over her, and he's gripping himself with closed eyes, lost in her.

The unfilled emptiness, so close, is agonizing. But hips snapping into his suction, she finds a slippery roughness as she rides his mouth. It's not enough to get her there. Not tonight. Not when she has to have him inside of her, not a head between her legs but something that covers. Like he can hear it in her gasps, he pulls off and she is unsteady as he rises. She could kiss him, tasting herself on his useful lips. Ask if his name was chosen or given, and if he wants her to say something else—something real—when she comes. But that's too much after the ways they've already seen each other. He trails fingers along her arm, lingering and swirling at her elbow, and Rey follows him to her softly lit bed.

It's what she's wanted: offering herself up to him, on her back, with no interruptions. Bent knees, her legs spread wide, and it's so hard to not stare at who he is as he settles between them. But he's avoiding her eyes now, ducking to skim his lips over her torso until his breath is hot on her chest. A teasing, scorching sweep over her breasts and Rey arches up into him, luxuriating in the feel of his massaging hands where she has mapped them for weeks. The pads of his thumbs roll over her nipples and she writhes beneath him until his mouth takes over, sucking with lips and tongue. He makes her ache, and she tilts to rub herself along the underside of his cock, and the relief holds back a breathy moan in her throat.

He won't fuck her, not like that. It's the same cliff. She's the folly.

Instead, his head is nestled between her breasts to listen, anchoring as he presses his ear to her sternum. Rey wants to tell him that there's nothing there worth listening to, just a void that devours, but he has found something he likes, something that has him reaching down to the joining of her thighs. It's the lightest touch, and every fiber of her feels it, like he's pulling at the center of a web that draws everything to it. Eyelids shut to keep out the shame of her weakness, but she imagines different hands on her. Maybe not instead of, but added to. Longer hair dusting over her exposed body. Taller, broader—

Not here. Ben doesn't belong here. So she lets her hips float up, sliding herself against Ap'lek's fingers instead and keeps him closer because he is the one that's real. She's so slick that she immediately loses the catching feeling and the drag of skin, and it's only wetness.

She wraps her legs around him, holding him close. In the Force, he is a malestrom of yearning because when he listens to her heartbeat, he wants to bury himself hard in her. When he eases his fingers in, thick and perfectly curved, Rey knows it's enough to take her anywhere he wants. And when he moves them, she is sure that _this_ is where his control could slip. Just here, when her pulse races and he's fucking her with his hand and she shudders around him. She's going to come, and she feels so naked, so exposed by her heart slamming inside her rib cage beneath his expert ear, broadcasting the orgasm that's winding in her belly. Ap'lek matches her, fingers strong and steady to bring her there, and when it breaks her open, she covers her mouth so her helpless moans won't drown out her pumping heart but she can't stop from thrusting into his hand.

He's panting and she's sure—he can come from this. He can empty himself just by listening to her, and she has never felt so crucial. Coming back down, she watches his shoulders move as he carefully withdraws his fingers and grips his cock with them, coating himself with her. His hushed breathing is jagged and she knows he's close but she wants more of him.

“Please.” Rey shuffles down the bed beneath him. “I want to taste you.”

His gulp is visible, a whole-throated movement. Even if he won't say it, she senses it: he's worried. They're still close to things that make him unchecked, and if her mouth is his to fuck, if all he has to do is drive down into her throat, he doesn't know if he can stop when she chokes, when the gagging makes tears run from her eyes. And she wants that, but he doesn't. So she eases out from underneath him and gently pushes him onto his back with reassuring strokes down his chest. In all of her fantasies, she realizes that she neglected this—the utter downfall of him, waiting on her clean bed, needing nothing at all but her.

He slips his fingers in his mouth, sucking her off of him until his unflinching patience has her leaning down. She grips him, steadying, so her lips can close around the shining tip of his cock. He tastes like her, and the slippery-clear sweetness of precome. He jolts once, pushing against her warm moving tongue before he is still, letting her take him. She gives suction, glides him slowly against the inside of her cheek, pushes him into the far back of her throat. He is noiseless.

When she looks up at him, he's staring at the ceiling, the back of his hand resting on his open mouth.

She slides him out so she can speak. “You're so quiet.”

He glances down at her like he just woke up, like he was so lost that he didn't notice she'd stopped.

“I'm listening.”

Rey swirls her touch around the head of his cock and watches the involuntary pulsation in response.

“What do you hear?” she asks.

“You.”

It doesn't take long after that. The warning is the slightest curling of his fingers on the back of her neck. She holds him in her mouth, his body tense as he floods her, coming in streaks across her tongue. When she swallows, it's reluctant—she wishes she could keep him in her all night, until he spills from her sleep-loose lips to be kissed off of her in the morning.

Ap'lek sighs, long and low, when she pulls off of him. Shivers when she blazes kisses over his hips and stomach and chest as she crawls up his body. He smells only of warmed skin. She lies on him, her legs straddling, turning to put her ear against his heart. It hammers, still slowing from his orgasm, and the racing of it is good to balance out the ones she's stopped. She taps the rhythm of it into his side until it's effortless and she'll remember. She wants to hear what it does when he sleeps, if it speeds up when he sees her in the morning. If it ever falters. He writes things on her back with his unhurried finger in a script she doesn't know, swirling and dotted.

Rey props her chin on his chest.

“Will you stay?”

His expression is unreadable. Through the Force, conflicted longing surges and she's not sure if it's from him or from her.

“I shouldn't,” he says finally.

She feathers a touch over his neck and along his shoulder. “But stay.”

Ap'lek goes back to writing.

“I will,” he says.

She doesn't know how much time passes, with his arms around her and her lips pressed to the smoothness of his skin. But, eventually, her legs go numb from how they're folded, so she rolls off. He turns to face her, and she traces the ridge of his nose.

Even here, after everything, he's unknown. The path of his life, his family. How old he is. The things he's done. He has a story and she wants to learn it in snippets that she'll hoard until a picture forms. There's wisdom she needs, as sleep threatens.

“When do you stop seeing the people you've killed?” Rey asks.

If he thinks it's an odd question to drift between their pillows, he gives no indication.

“Weeks,” he says quietly. “Some you won't remember. Some never leave.”

It's what she was afraid of. Poe's body, limp and uninhabited, is branded into her memory. A forfeiture for what she has now.

She waves the lights off.

And there's another question, one that's been sitting deep in her for so long that she doesn't want to ask, but in the dark, she can feel his gaze on her and it makes her bold.

“Do you care about me?”

It's a dense, sliceable silence.

“Much more than I should,” he says.

It's selfish and sustaining, and Rey wants him to care about her unfailingly, to crave her closeness and think about her when she isn't there. And the next step, the one that makes her dizzy with need...

“What should we do about that?”

“Ignore it,” Ap'lek says.

He seems to have a ready answer for everything, even if she doesn't like it. And this makes her plummet, confused and grasping.

“Why?”

He untucks the far edge of the sheet and wraps it around her shoulders. “We may be yours, but you're not ours.”

Rey bristles, already dreading the response to her inevitable question.

“And whose am I?”

“Nobody's. That's why you're here,” he says. “But it's okay if you change your mind one day.”

“I won't,” Rey says sharply as she mashes her pillow. Something like fear bubbles up in her at the thought of it. “I don't want that.” She drops her head into the downy give.

Ap'lek brushes his thumb over her temple, back and forth.

“I don't think we always get to choose.”

And, in the dark, he stays with her and she knows he's right.

* * *

In dreams, Ben has better timing. He leaves Starkiller Base with his father, and Rey casts nervous glances at him in the Falcon until, eventually, she trusts him. Or Luke doesn't interrupt, and he gets to touch more than her fingers and she tells him to keep going. Or, after killing Snoke, he is wiser and more far-seeing, and stops firing on the Resistance, and they escape together. He knows who his grandfather was— _really_ was—and he never builds a lightsaber. He never sends the knights, or he's never Supreme Leader.

But always, it ends with her beside him.

And he always wakes up alone.

* * *

She needs him. Without softness, Ushar feeds the things that make her strong. He keeps her honed and whetted, and when their sparring eventually finds its way into her quarters, Rey doesn't stop it.

They're playing another game, between lashing strikes that drive them down the room lined with collected relics.

“He was so angry when he found out I hit you,” Ushar says and, beneath his mask, Rey hears the lilt of a smile. It's difficult to imagine.

“Why?” She knows why, understands that it led to a different order for Ap'lek, but she can't let Ushar feel that. Her helmet's vocoder rasps the word.

Ushar shakes his head, admonishing. He tosses his club between his hands, a deft habit that keeps her guessing. “Why didn't you kill him when he was on his knees in front of you?”

Rey takes a wide swing. He deflects with an impatient wave of his hand. Her spin changes direction abruptly, an explosive move Ushar isn't expecting. The tip of her lightsaber catches him on the left shoulder, singeing through the leather.

“You're getting stronger,” he says, rolling his shoulder through the pain and flexing his fingers. “But that's not an answer.”

Rey swishes the blade through the air, listening to the crackling that's hers now. “He meant nothing to me. A worthless kill.”

“A kill's a kill, even if they're begging. And that was a mistake.”

He steps close behind her and pulls the length of his club up to her throat, a bar pinning her against him. She's back in Niima Outpost, getting mugged for the scrap she's carrying. The panic-forgotten lightsaber slips from her grasp. He's dragging her back, into the refresher.

“You think I care who you are?” His words are glass shards in her ear. She claws at his hands, kicking wildly. “I'll kill you in here and wash your blood down the drain.”

Rey stomps down to hook his foot, but he's walking wide to keep out of range and her boot hits only empty floor. She has just enough room to twist to face him, chin tucked so the mask takes the tightening pressure. His head draws back so fast, she can't get away before he crashes his helmet into hers, the ringing metal rattling her skull. Ushar releases her and watches her stumble into the refresher wall.

“Sucks, doesn't it?”

Rey gasps at the reverberating pain and sweeps her hands blindly along the wall, searching for something to hold on to. She can't speak.

He's toying with her. Still. Fury fills her, driving out the pain and sharpening her senses. When he lunges for her, Rey is ready.

Blue, forking lightening crackles from her splayed fingertips, catching him and slamming him against the transparisteel shower. Just a zap, but the small room is blindingly bright as he folds. When it's over, Ushar is hunched, groaning. He makes no more moves. Raises his hand to signal, and the game is finished.

“Nobody's going to fucking believe me.” He's winded and stunned.

“Then don't tell them,” Rey says over her shoulder as she goes into the bedroom. She unlatches her helmet and sets it down on the use-scuffed desk. She didn't plan to do that—just meant to push him back—but, given the recent revelation about her ancestry, it would be juicy gossip among the First Order rank-and-file. And she doesn't relish the thought of the knights joking about it behind her back.

Ushar shuffles in, still recovering.

“We have secrets now?” He's rubbing the side of his neck.

She yanks off her gloves and inspects the scorch marks at the fingertips, trying to rub away the new pitting in the leather. “Why, do you have one to tell me?”

Ushar considers that, like he's fishing around for something he hasn't told anyone before. Probably immediately before they die, in some kind of depraved ritual of unburdening himself to the almost-gone.

“When you kill people, it makes me come.”

Rey snorts, rolling her eyes. “That's not a secret. You're loud.”

Ushar shrugs. “It gets me going.” He pauses, then tilts his head. Sniffing, air hissing through his helmet's breathing tubes. He takes a step toward her. “Are you bleeding?” The delight is apparent in his voice.

She's kicking off her boots, wondering how he can identify it through her layers of armor. He probably thinks it's his handiwork.

“Yes, but I'm not hurt.”

Ushar waits for an explanation as she pulls off her vambraces and tosses them into a lazy pile beside the armchair, which is fast becoming the place she drapes her clothes when she can't be bothered to use the laundry disposal system.

Rey's working on untying her outer tunic. “Just my regular monthly bleeding.” For extra clarity, she points between her legs.

“Can I see?”

Rey stops, her arm half out of a pleated sleeve.

“Sorry?”

He leans the studded handle of his club against the wall like an afterthought. “Can I see it?”

So she didn't mishear him. And, beyond the strangeness, she can't think of a real reason not to indulge him. It's utterly mundane to her, after all, and it won't make a difference if he wants to watch.

“Fine.” She gestures to the straps crossing his chest, where the thermal detonators and vibromachette still hang. “Those too.”

Distractedly, he takes them off, watching as Rey drops her pants to the floor and steps out of them, as she flicks her foot when her ankle gets caught. It should be awkward—with her exposed from the waist down and alone with someone this dangerous in her bedroom for the first time, but he's so absorbed by what her body is doing on the inside that it's more of a demonstration than anything. When she returns to the refresher, Ushar follows at a distance and gives her space while she washes her hands.

“I've never been with a human who does this,” he says, like that explains the depth of his curiosity. And maybe it does. Rey wants to ask if backhanding her and fucking her mouth really counts as being with her, but she's not in the mood to argue semantics. He's focused on her legs as he peels off his gloves, searching for what he can smell. “Where's the blood?”

Rey isn't sure how she got here so suddenly, with her propping one foot up on the edge of the toilet to remove the flexible, inserted cup, but at least Ushar's reactions are entertaining. She likes him like this, she decides: awed and hesitant. It's rare.

She shows him the nearly-full cup, and he steadies her wrist with his calloused hand so he can study the contents with an unsettling fascination. The Force around him is sooty and turbid. All of his ideas about blood are mixing with sex in a new way and he can't look at anything else. Except for when he was between her lips, it’s almost the first time she’s felt his skin on hers.

“I”m going to rinse it,” Rey says eventually, nodding to the sink. His cock is straining against his pants, testing the heavy-duty stitching, and she wouldn't mind touching him but she wants her hands free. In case he tries anything.

“Keep it.” Ushar rushes ahead of her to grab a disposable cup from the cabinet nearby. Rey doesn't laugh as he reverently watches her drop the entire thing into it and set it down on a shelf. While she scrubs her hands again, he's still examining it.

Then he's behind her, stroking her bare hip and feeling the splay of her bones like he wants to see through her. She doesn't need him for this; he has other functions. But she can get something out of this, too, and he's a crude enough thing to let touch her. Responding roughly to her soft moan, Ushar turns her around, grabs her ass and grinds her into his thigh. The leather is smooth over his heated muscles and Rey shifts the angle so he's bumping her clit.

“Get it on me,” he says, voice gravelly. He's breathing deep.

The spiced, sweet scent of him fills the tiny space between them, and Rey traces the bulging outline of his cock until he knocks her hand out of the way.

“Don't touch me,” he growls. “Just bleed.”

The tips of his fingers are prying between her legs and Rey thinks it must be a peculiar kind of attraction if it makes him touch her bare. Separation, control, and distance are what he likes, but he's walking her to the bed like he can't help himself when something like her is caught in his net.

Sitting down on the edge of the mattress, she hesitates.

“I don't want you to hurt me right now,” Rey says as she settles back onto her elbows. They've done enough of that for the night, even if he seems to have forgotten about his shoulder.

“I won't.”

She lets her legs fall open a little, and wonders idly if she'll end up with stained sheets. Before she can really worry about it, Ushar reaches down to glide his fingers along either side of her. He feels the strong bands of tendons, and yanks at the short, coarse hair. He tugs and stretches her inner lips, one at a time, pulling them as far as they'll go, then releasing them and jiggling the skin as it relaxes. It's a focused playing, like he forgot she's in the room at all.

Exploring, he dips a finger in and the slipperiness is different, more sensitive. When he pulls his finger out, it's shining crimson at the knuckle. He's mesmerized, like she's performed a miracle.

“It's beautiful,” he says. It's so absurd, with his sadism right below the surface, but she believes it. He paints it over her with swirling touches that smear. Drags a wavy line down the inside of her leg like it's a wavering arrow's flight. He revels in the mess of it, not for her but for him. He wants her to spasm, not caring that that it would bring release, but only that it might squeeze out more for him and leave her helpless at his hand.

With two fingers, he pinches the shaft of her clit thorough the hood. It's a cushioned intensity and when he starts to pull and roll, the pleasure ripples deep in her belly. She bucks urgently. If she told him that it felt good, that he taught her a new way to touch herself and that nobody did it like him, he wouldn’t care.

It's so far off, when he threatened to kill her while she came. And now he's between her thighs, at the foot of her bed, gripping himself hard through his pants. No threat hanging over her approaching orgasm. Just the novelty of someone hypnotized by the normal ebbs and flows of her body, who wants her to coat him with it because it's his favorite thing without any of the work.

And he rubs the orgasm out of her, strangely and obliquely. Even the release itself is unusual—a stuttering plateau halfway through that keeps her hovering, toes spread and feet flexed, until the rest of it crashes down on her all at once.

Rey falls back onto the bed and lets her knees drop wide. When she pushes her hair off of her sweaty forehead, she holds her palm there while she catches her breath.

“Can I use the blood?” Ushar asks, peering into the refresher. Ready for the real prize.

“Use it?”

“To pretend I killed you.”

Rey sighs, rubbing her eyes. They left normal behind long ago, but it's hard to remember how exactly they got to _this_. “Alright. Rinse the cup when you're done. Just hurry up. I need to take a shower.”

“Yes, Master.”

The door slides closed.

Rey is sprawled limp on the bed, still relaxed from the orgasm, when all the sound is sucked out of the room except for Ben's echoing, sharp inhale. For all the times she's fantasized about this happening, it's never him showing up without one of the knights being in her. At least one just got her off; that has to count for something. And even if she's still wearing an undertunic, at least she's mostly exposed.

Rey lifts her head up. Ben's hand is shielding his face. His thin gray shirt is tighter than it needs to be, stretching around his biceps. A base layer, surely. She mentally moves cold planets to the top of the list of potential search locations. His hair is infinitesimally longer and she wants to feel it grow.

“I'm sorry. I didn't—” He does a reflexive double-take before looking away again. “Is that blood?”

Rey heaves another sigh and flops back down. Explaining this is getting repetitive.

“Yes. It's normal. It happens every month,” she recites in a monotone because bored is safe.

“I know it's normal,” Ben says, more than a bit defensive. The effect is ruined by the fact that he's turned completely to the side and speaking to nothing. “I just thought you were hurt.”

“Well, I'm not.” She picks a loose hair from the corner of her mouth and wipes it on the blanket beside her.

“Okay,” he says. “Good.”

She won't think about how the praising word rests between his lips and how she wants to hear him say it the way Vicrul does, like it's her name, when she sucks him just right.

In the pause, there's a furtive interest from Ben. Finally, he's here with her and she is too relaxed to be embarrassed or seductive or provocative, or anything else that makes sense. Instead, she's only comfortable and receptive.

“You can look. It's alright,” says Rey.

She listens to him move closer as she studies the ceiling. The edges where the walls meet it are lined with narrow, pin-pricked vents, and this is so much like when she's awakened by a vivid dream and can't tell if it's over yet.

“Can I touch you?”

She shivers at Ben's voice, sudden and nearby and gentle, asking _that_ question.

“Please,” she says without thinking, because this isn't real.

His hand is warm and alive on her knee and she jumps but he rubs away the shock of it with short, sweeping strokes. Maybe he looks at her clean fingers or the chaotic smudges, but he knows she didn't do it herself.

“Which one was it?”

“Ushar.”

She's still staring at the ceiling, not wanting to see Ben's face. He either utterly repelled by her, spent and smeared, or he's drinking her in. Either is unbearable, but judging by the vortex his Force signature has become, it's mostly the latter.

“He's just in the 'fresher,” Rey adds. A warning that this will be a hurried secret between them—her on the _Steadfast_ and him somewhere out in the vast galaxy. He's outlining her kneecap with soft fingertips, and she knows he's making a map of his own. She wishes he would carry her away again, and let her wake up alone with him.

“What did he use?” Ben asks. He's trying to sound casual, like what they're doing is alright instead of the secluded, indecent thing it really is. If she doesn't look at him, it will be fine. Fine that he's touching her and memorizing her for later and asking detailed things. Fine that she wants him to drag his unstained touch down her thigh.

“His fingers.”

“Did he make you come?” The ache in it is eye-closing and she'll do anything to make this less serious.

“Yes. That's why my legs are useless.”

He gives her knee a wobble, testing the springiness of her thigh muscles. “Seem good to me.”

Rey laughs. “Thank you, doctor.”

His hand slides from her and he's quiet for so long that Rey almost picks her head up off the bed again to check if he's still there. In the refresher, water is running.

“Your laugh sounds like how I imagined,” Ben says finally. Guilt surges as she realizes he just heard hers for the first time. “And I miss you.”

It wasn't supposed to be like this. He was supposed to be wracked with envy when he saw her body. He was supposed to hear her laughing at someone else's joke, to see how anyone was better for her. And they weren't supposed to be alone, because that's when mistakes happen between them. Mistakes like this.

She opens her mouth before she has a plan about what to say. And that's what she's still trying to figure out when the refresher door swishes open. Ben is gone.

Ushar walks in, drying off his hands with a towel. Oblivious, and she's thankful that he doesn't pick up on her disequilibrium. Or if he does, he doesn't care. He jabs his thumb back at the open door.

“There's some electrical damage in there, you know.”

“We have no idea how that happened,” she reminds him. She rolls over onto her stomach, feet dangling off the end of the bed.

“You're almost as fucked up as me, Master.” It's said with a kind of affection, but it perches in her wrong, dark corners. It will wait for later.

Rey looks around her quarters, unsure of how to ask someone like him. There's a long night ahead.

“Would you kill me in my sleep?”

“Only if you ordered me to,” Ushar says.

Rey huffs, and she doesn't miss her helmet's distortion of the sound. It's honest. “Do you want to spend the night?”

“Is it an order?”

“No.”

“Then I'll see you tomorrow,” Ushar says. “I hate sharing beds.”

Without another word, he collects his things and Rey is alone in her quarters, watching the door close behind him.

She's amazed by how different pain feels, now that she deserves it.


	4. Taken

Trudgen looks down at her with deep-set eyes. His wrists are bound to the column behind him and he's been waiting for this, stripped and alone in her private quarters until the Council meeting finished. His shoulders are roped with muscle, creating a smooth slope up to his neck. Rey has the sudden urge to sink her teeth into the thick flesh and feel him shudder, but instead she just touches to work her way over him. Scratching her nails through his short, dense beard. Swirling her fingers over his shaved head. Tugging gently on his ear, then harder until she pulls him down to her. He doesn't even wince.

“Will you do what I tell you?”

In the Force, his answer is a hungry glow before he speaks it.

“Yes, Master.” His lips are wet and eager, voice deep. Her title takes on new weight when they're alone.

“Did you like watching Cardo fuck me?”

He swallows.

“Yes, Master.”

Talking like this doesn't come easily to her; it's even more difficult now that he has a face and a name and already belongs to her. But he's relishing every single word that comes out of her mouth, and she feels how it's working him up.

“Did you like hearing how hard he made me come?”

Trudgen's eyes roll up to the ceiling like he's begging.

“Master...” His mouth moves, but it's like he can't remember how to finish speaking.

“Have you been saving this up for me, like I asked?” She dips her hand below his cock, cradling and cupping the heavy-hanging weight of his fullness. A week of self-denial, of her elbowing him into unoccupied corners where she stroked him through his pants until his knees buckled and he begged and she walked away abruptly, leaving him seething and grateful. A week of him waiting for her to call him to her quarters.

He groans at her touch. “Yes, Master.”

“Good,” she says. “Because that's all mine.”

A slight squeeze before she lets go, and Trudgen tries to press his cock against her. Returning from the meeting, Rey had completely ignored him. Showered and changed into a loose robe, ate dinner, all while pretending that a burly man with a unyeildingly hard cock wasn't strapped to a structural support column like a trophy. There's a burn scar on his shoulder, a perfect deliberate circle. She paces the length of her bedroom, tiptoeing and then dropping down onto her heels so he can watch her breasts bounce a little under the thin fabric of her robe.

“You'll stand there all night when I'm not using you. Do you understand?”

“Yes. Thank you, Master.”

“You will not touch yourself or have an orgasm unless I give you permission.”

He looks like he's in paradise.

“Yes, Master.”

“If I need to use you at any time, you will make yourself available to me.” With painstaking slowness, Rey pulls on the robe's sash and it falls open as she approaches him.

“Please, Supreme Leader. I'm yours.”

He's so hard that his pulse bounces in his cock, a clear drop of precome clinging to the tip. She needs to hear the racked up way he comes, but the most important part of all of this is to have him wholeheartedly believe that she might make him wait another week. That pleasure is something for him to collect in stolen moments, from her fleeting contact and unpredictable attention. He wants to be an afterthought, kept in her bedroom like a decoration she doesn't even see until she's in a particular mood.

When Rey bends over, robe pulled to the side, and notches his cock against her, it's easy with her wetness. With one smooth motion, she pushes back onto him. Trudgen coughs a gasp.

“Can I come, Master?”

“No.” She's tipping her hips, feeling the wiry hairs at the base of him brush over her clit. Using him feels good, the shape of him and the ribbed give of his veins. He's pinned, with no room to really thrust, so he just holds steady while she moves.

When Rey steps away, his cock slides out with a wet sound. A complaint's on the flat of his tongue but he keeps it there, loving the taste of it. To reward his restraint, Rey releases the bind on his wrists; the lack of a new command is enough to keep him there, and he has no interest in disobedience. With a yawn, Rey goes over to her desk and picks up a datapad. He's about to learn that she likes to tease herself, too.

Trudgen licks his lips.

The edge of the bed dips where she sits down. Lying back, she bends her knees and keeps them wide as she hooks her heels into the bed frame. The angle means he can't fully see where she's spread out, only her profile as she taps the screen to open a new report.

“'The modifications to the F-11D's magnatomic adhesion grip, proposed below',” she reads, “'would reduce production costs by nearly .08% annually.' That seems worth it, doesn't it?”

“Yes, Master.”

She doesn't understand where his patience comes from, how he just watches her, aching and waiting.

Her sigh is resolute, like she's only offering this as a favor. “You can fuck me. But be quiet.”

The truth is that it's dizzyingly arousing to keep someone so hungry for her. She skims the datapad, scrolling past the anticipated production schedule while he eagerly gets between her legs. His hands are warm and calloused on her legs, and he peers around the datapad to watch her expression as he eases into her. Face kept carefully neutral, Rey flicks to the next screen, her mind full of begging words she wants to say.

His delving is tentative at first, a testing movement to see if he's following the rules. When she doesn't respond, he goes a little harder. And she does keep reading, to herself, losing her spot over and over again because he's trying so hard to be quiet and the bitten-off sounds make her clench.

“Not sure I would have shown up here if I knew there would be so many reports,” Rey says conversationally. She glances down at where he's fucking her like she just noticed. “ _Your_ only job is to make me come. That must be nice. Maybe you should read to me later while you fuck me.”

Trudgen groans before he can stop himself.

“Shhh, I'm trying to concentrate.” She goes back to the datapad, grateful that it hides her face from him and covers up the way her breathing is speeding up. His cock is working her, a scooping that grinds her deep, his thumb gently circling her clit while she reads about collapsable foregrips and the Sonn-Blas Corporation's order cancellation policies. It'll be hard to seem bored when she floods him with wetness. Because that's what he's going to make her do.

The noise he makes is sudden and tight, and she has no doubt that he's holding himself back. Her heels dig into the frame of the bed, bracing herself against the orgasm he's building up in her. He wants it, rocking his cock harder into her wall, thumb faster, firmer on her.

She doesn't make a sound. She's sure of it. But she does lock up her entire body, focused on the spot where he's soaked and still grinding. And she does kick a little, arching off of the bed while it jolts through her with a rush.

When it's over, he's panting and running his hands over everything wet, pride billowing off of him through the Force. He didn't come and he's bathing in her.

“Go clean that up,” Rey says, opening the next report.

He gets unsteadily to his feet and pads into the refresher, and she takes the few seconds to run shaky fingers over herself. She doesn't look at him when he returns with a towel.

“You know you're going to do that again, right?” she says flatly. The dabbing wipes are soft against her skin.

Trudgen smiles at her.

“Yes, Master.”

* * *

“The First Order fleet appears to be following the Hydian Way, but we expect them to diverge from major hyperspace routes as they get closer to Thyferra.”

Ben shakes his head and points to a confluence. Next to him, Leia squints at the map in the dim room as she tries to make out what he's indicating.

“They would reroute here,” he says quietly, mostly to her, following the path of the Rimma Trade Route. “It's more direct and the bacta shipment is time-sensitive.”

“Rey would want the element of surprise.” Kaydel Ko Connix fires back, interrupting. “We know her.”

 _You knew her_ , _a little,_ he corrects but keeps that part to himself. “She's probably not involved in that level of decision making.”

“Then what does the Supreme Leader do all day?” Rose asks, lip curled in disdain, her tone bitterly pointed. It hits, embedding deeper than she could ever imagine. A flash of Rey, flushed and sweating and smeared, burns into his mind.

“Whatever they want,” he says.

Finn jabs his chin at the map, refocusing the conversation. They've strayed, and he has turned so much of his anger into an untiring urgency. His Force signature is a purifying wind when he gets like this; it dusts people off, and they respond to it even if they don't understand. In another galaxy—one where Kylo hadn't taken every single thing away from him, leaving only his patched and welded strength—they might have been friends. Finn still won't so much as glance in his direction, months later, and Ben knows fairness now. To Finn, he'll always look like Kylo Ren and there's no berth wide enough for that.

Not for the first time, Ben thinks about holing up somewhere until everyone he's ever been is a sky-bleached memory.

“He's right,” Finn says, words clipped and somber. “Those ships are expendable.” He pauses and lets them all picture the people on board, to feel the seriousness of what they're about to do. “Command will hang back. Flanking them is our only chance.”

When the meeting is over, Ben wants to thank him.

Instead, he goes to find a flight suit that fits his tall frame. And maybe that's close enough.

* * *

It's a long day, full of damage reports and new plans. A Resistance ambush crippled part of their fleet and left her generals and captains running through the hallways shouting.

They're fuming now, passing blame with daggered looks and veiled jabs, as they present updated figures: casualties, costs, time lost to dock for full repairs. The huge room is lit by a holomap, flashing lines where new routes could be.

Rey thinks her council must be feigning ignorance about the unidentified Resistance pilot with an unrecognizable call sign who took out the bridge of a Siege Dreadnought, leaving it completely open to bombardment. Tonight, the Resistance base—where ever they've moved it to—will be full of self-congratulatory drinking and she wonders if Ben Solo ever gets drunk. He'd pace himself for a while, until some round of Chandrilan raava caught up with him and he got sloppy. Rey imagines someone, bold from their own drinking, running their fingers over his broad chest and taking his hand to lead him into an out-of-the-way utility room or an abandoned tent. Tongue-sliding kisses and the sounds she knows he must make, and he could forget her.

In her fist, her ring digs into her flesh. No. He is contaminated, a traitor twice over. Nobody would touch him.

Standing beside her, Kuruk notices and bends down to wrap his hand around hers. His voice is a murmur, a flowing suggestion above the droning of General Griss.

“Master, let them clean up their mess.” He strokes the back of her fist until it relaxes open. The circulation returns with a tingling rush. “We can take your mind off of it.”

He straightens, having planted the seed.

She can have them all, Rey realizes. Right now. One after the other, before she can catch her breath. Two at a time. Three. Different combinations that she thinks might feel good together—rough and soothing, quiet and demanding. The salacious novelty of it, her ravenous body, the sure escape of orgasms. Because they would make her come. She can half feel it already, the gathering wetness between her legs and the perfect temptation of them, surrounding her. Through the Force, she lets it leak from her: that she wants to be crowded. She needs them in a line outside the door of a sparse room aboard the _Night Buzzard_ , listening to her getting fucked and knowing they'll have their chance.

It spreads over them like a drop of blood in water. In their chairs and standing, they begin to shift. One clears his throat. Sitting close beside her at the table, Cardo eases his leg over to press against hers, hidden to everyone but the knights at her back. She's thrumming. Kuruk's hand is on her again in the darkened room, this time swirling in her hair at the back of her head.

Their restless movements look like boredom. Rey doesn't spend much time on the knights' black-walled and heavily armored ship, but right now it's the only place she wants to be: a refuge from the First Order's back-stabbing ineptitude. Away from the _Steadfast_ , they won't be interrupted, their sounds swallowed up by the silence of space.

Rey rises from her seat, hoping the buckling of her knees seems like the effect of sitting for hours.

General Griss trails off, arm outstretched to point to a proposed resupply station.

“Ma'am?”

Rey smooths the front of her dark tunic as the knights fall into formation. Her face is the only exposed skin and she wants to skip ahead to the part where she's uncovered by them.

“I expect an update on our progress in the morning.” She straightens her supple leather belt, lightsaber clipped securely. It will all be on a cold metal floor soon enough. “I'll be unreachable until then.”

As soon as they're out of the room, they are a groping, impatient swarm around her. They steer her through the corridors with gloved hands, like she's something they captured, and in the mass of bodies and weapons, they grab at her waist and squeeze her breasts. On the shuttle to their ship, she is the fresh kill in the middle of the pack. They cup her ass and grind against her. Ushar's fingers are twinging pressure through her clothes and she pitches against him until Trudgen pulls him away to slide his hand up under her tunic. Anticipation with a riptide of envy ripples off of them, willing to share but wanting the biggest chunks of her for themselves. Only Ap'lek stays back, watching as she's lifted and passed, bumped and held. She keeps her eyes locked onto his helmet as someone behind her reaches around to cram their arm down the front of her pants, and there's just enough room for them to dip their glove-covered fingers artlessly into her. Their cock, digging hard into her back, is so thick that when she leans into the knight, she knows it's Cardo without checking. His roughness is frenzied, nearly enough to pick her up off the floor. The first to break into her, he's growling with it, and she's so tight that his glove shifts over his fingers, a sheath that she grips.

“You better let them stretch you out before it's my turn,” he tells her. It's a warning, but she's not sure he'll even be enough because she wants to be utterly razed.

The others touch her mouth, her stomach, her legs. They're listening to her gasps, to the unbelievable wetness that Cardo is finding in her. Through the straining fabric, Kuruk touches where Cardo's fingers slam into her and it's his helmet, close and focusing, that makes her sure that they can wreck her body the way she needs them to. The promise of it gives her sounds a climbing fragmentation until Cardo is wringing out her first orgasm of the night, a soaked prize that he wants to make sure they know is his. Someone strokes her throat to feel the moaning vibrations and hands are all over her, like they can get nearer to it.

The feeling of them is too much, and she falls into the things that happen to her body. Her hair tumbles down, softening the brutal promises Cardo groans into her ear. Her nipples ache, pinched hard and pulled until she cries out and she thinks it's Ushar but he's busy rubbing the back of her hand against his cock while she whimpers. Her glove is pulled off of her other hand, and her fingers pressed around another cock. Her ankle is lock-gripped and lifted until Vicrul can get close enough to grind against her. There's no way to balance, but they hold her and she can thrash and kick with the need of it until Vicrul's making her shake and her throat is being squeezed by someone and her choked shouts are aimed up at the shuttle's close ceiling.

“Do it again.” Her voice sounds like hers, but so thick and voracious that she repeats it to make sure it really is. “Do it again.”

They're unstrapping her boots, tearing at the closure of her tunic. She's still drifting back down when the shuttle docks, and they're a dark torrent that pulls her along onto their ship.

Kylo's old quarters, once dingy and spartan, have been updated for the new Supreme Leader. At the massive, bolted door, Rey picks Kuruk and Vicrul from the chaos, indicating to the others to wait, and lets the two knights drag her inside. Feverish, they are on her in an instant, groping and snatching at her clothes until she is stripped and insatiable.

In a moment clear of lust-intoxicated greed, Vicrul catches her chin in his hand, tipping her up to look at him. Behind his helmet, she sees the flash of his eyes.

“You sure?” he asks.

“Yes. Everything off,” she says. Rey wants them unfettered and they hurry to comply.

Vicrul is done first, and he kicks the pile of his discarded clothing and armor off to the side. They don't make it to the immense bed: a sleek, low-sided sofa is closer and he lies down, cock straining as he watches Rey straddle him.

“Do you want me to—”

His question is cut off when Rey slides down onto him. Filled, she moans, and whatever he was going to ask is long forgotten as he immediately grabs her hips and helps her bounce on his cock.

“ _Fuck_ , that's it,” Vicrul grates out, scooping her against him. Eyes heavy-lidded already. “That's yours.”

Drawers open and close as Kuruk searches for something. More than ready, but he needs a way to ease into her where he wants.

“Top drawer, left side,” Rey says.

He finds the large cylindrical bottle and wastes no time pumping it into his palm and slicking it generously over his cock, groaning at the tactile change. After setting the bottle on a nearby table, he climbs behind Rey. His hands coast over her shoulders and down her back. If his legs are tangling with Vicrul's, neither of them mind.

Four hands on her. Two men touching her at once, skin on skin, one already sheathed in her, hot and hard. Eyes drifting shut, she revels in it: the way Vicrul slows down and Kuruk's mouth locks onto the slope of her neck, sucking hard as his slippery fingers smear the cool gel over her entrance. A nudge and he's in, just a little, but it makes her buck roughly into Vicrul, full of need.

“Yeah, that's right,” Vicrul says to her, resting his thumb lightly over her clit so she can grind into it while she bears down. “Just relax.”

Kuruk's fingers are patient but strong, and he's working her open with careful thrusting that makes her lean forward to take him faster. Vicrul's mouth and tongue are warm on her breast, and his lips close around the hardened tips, drawing out a groan. When she's slick muscle, Kuruk slides out, only to replace his fingers with the head of his cock pressed against her. Clenching around Vicrul, she's trying to slow her breathing.

“Let me see you,” Vicrul says. Rey looks down at him, propping herself up with hands on his chest, so he can watch her face when she takes a second cock for the first time.

Kuruk inches in, no friction as he pushes, but it's unmaking her. Gasping, she lets her eyes slide out of focus, distant with new knowledge of how she can feel. Of how she can be so stuffed that there's nothing left but to be overrun.

Vicrul is buried deep, fingers brushing her cheek. It's all there, through the Force: that he wants her to feel good and he likes ripping her apart, too, and right now those two things are indistinguishable.

“Tell me it's too much,” he says, thrusting harder.

Her body is stretched so far, so tight, that it's almost true. They must be able to feel it—she can barely fit them both. “It's too much.”

“Do you want us to stop?”

“No. Harder.”

Something takes them over and they're using her completely, plunging and greedy. She is warm holes. Hearing them both. Their hands roaming, fighting over places to hold her. Kuruk's licks and bites. Vicrul's delicious touches.

She sits up and arches her back against Kuruk and his lips are by her ear, his arm wrapping around her waist to dip his fingers down to her clit, rubbing above where Vicrul is fucking her.

“I can feel him in you, Master,” Kuruk whispers, words jagged. He's close, but not as close as she is. They're finding a pace, a rhythm that can't change or she'll be lost.

“Don't stop,” she says thickly.

“I won't,” he promises.

She's going to come on their cocks. It happens when she feels them rubbing together through the thin wall of her, when she looks down at Vicrul and knows that, through her body, he's feeling Kuruk's gliding along the underside of his cock and _that's_ how close they are in her tightness, and she breaks apart on them. Loud and the knights in the hallway can hear what they're doing to her.

Rey crumples against Vicrul's chest, but she doesn't feel spent. She feels like a ship, buffeted by a storm that has only just begun. Kuruk takes her by the hips, angling into her like he needs to, a driving that won't last long, if his gasps are anything to go by.

Vicrul lifts her, just enough to pepper her with kisses on her forehead, her chin, her cheeks. He goes for her mouth but she turns away, burying her face in his neck. The rejection doesn't bother him. Instead, he's cooing into her ear and playing with her hair while Kuruk's faster thrusts push her body against him.

“You're so smart, Rey. You know that? Do you know what would happen if I could feel your pussy and your mouth at the same time?”

And Kuruk groans, maybe at his words, maybe at Rey's answering clenching. He comes, hard and loud, seated deep to spill into her. Rey gasps against Vicrul's skin, her mouth seeping, while Kuruk empties.

Kuruk bends down to press his lips to her back, and he pulls out of her with a final sighing. Caresses, appreciative and sated, all along her thighs and ass. He's watching where Vicrul is in her, fucking her with subtle shifting. Vicrul keeps her full, but after two at once, one feels too simple. The sensation is less complex, and she misses the overwhelming nerve-buzzing awareness.

“Go to your quarters and wait,” Rey orders.

“Yes, Master.” Kuruk tips his head to the door. “Who should I send in?”

“Trudgen.” She can only think one step ahead, can't see the whole picture yet. Can't imagine more than two now.

Before he goes, a nod and an approving glance at how she's sitting up and rolling her hips against Vicrul. “Yes, Master.”

Vicrul's touch goes to where Kuruk sucked at her neck. “Ah, he got you good. That's going to stick around for a while. You like it when we leave marks?”

Rey likes it when they leave things behind. Likes it when they're with her when they're not. Loves finding their clothes left behind in her bedroom, their sweat on her skin after they go. She likes what they leave inside of her.

“You take our come so well,” Vicrul says, like he's thinking about the same thing, fingers pressing against where Kuruk was. “Ready for mine?”

Suddenly, she's not. She wants him to be there. The other knights stretch out in an intimidating line and she doesn't know if she will break on them, unprotected and weak with being what they all need.

“Stay,” Rey says to Vicrul.

_Don't let me think._

Surprised, he slows to a stop. A little flattered. “You want me to stay with you?”

“Please.”

Eyes dark, he traces her collarbone. It's an answer: he'll be her buffer. He'll take care of her while she does this filthy thing and he'll keep her up and be a witness to the ways they all fuck her.

“I like that,” he tells her. He pushes his thumb into her mouth, painting the wetness over her lips. “I like you like this.”

Rey grins, relieved, and taps her tongue to his thumb.

They're alone in the room, and Vicrul seizes the brief moment of privacy.

“Are you pretending it's him?” The only _him_ there is when he asks like this.

“I hate him.”

Vicrul thrusts. “Yeah, tell me. He fucked you over a little today, didn't he? What do you want to do to Ben Solo?”

Rey snarls at the full name, imagining the messy ways she could kill him. Ripping at his perfect hair and biting his soft mouth.

“Fuck, you get me so close when you think about him.”

“I'm not thinking about him.” A blatant lie and they both know it.

 _Don't let me think._ About how Ben probably tries to be quiet when uses his hand. How his hair might fall into his eyes when he steps into the shower, before the water flattens it. How he could push roughly into someone else and drink in their shocked moan and never have to fight off her name.

“Wonder what he's doing right now.” Vicrul speeds up as Rey bites down on her lip. “You wish he could see, don't you? Me too. He should watch us fuck you,” Vicrul says as the door opens and Trudgen enters. “What's it like out there?” Vicrul asks him, changing the subject. It snaps Rey back from far away fantasies.

“It's quiet.” Trudgen is undressing as he answers. “We're listening. Cardo keeps working himself up with the hand he used on her. So that'll be fast. And a lot.”

Rey's body responds to that—to the carnivorous way Cardo is letting it build up and how he'll tear her up just to fill her. What he had said to her about getting ready for him, while his fingers were blunt inside of her heat.

Groaning, brought too close by her anticipation, Vicrul slips out of her. Breathing like he's been running, he glances over to Trudgen.

“Go give that to him before I come in it.”

Rey is shaky, stiff as she climbs off of the sofa and walks to where Trudgen is gliding his hand over his cock, watching her. Long imagined in the corridor, he knows what to do with her. Warmed skin on hers, he pulls her over to him. Her thighs clamp around his cock, and he's gliding through the saturated gap. When he picks her up, he is a binding that folds her and lifts. It seems so easy that she wonders if she is floating. But his eyes are locked onto her mouth as he pushes in, and she knows he's doing it all to her. Strong hands and braced muscles keep her up. She is limber, loose-jointed from other orgasms, and it lets him get deep. Gravity drops her down onto his cock, a tiny plummet and a hard-slapping stop that makes her gasp. The force of it moves her breasts against him and he holds her even closer.

He's a pillar, and she won't fall, but it's so strange to feel buoyant that she wraps her hand around the back of his neck for stability, runs a touch along his hard chest.

And then the second pair of hands. A spiraling thrill that lurches her stomach and breaks Vicrul down into parts of a person. She'll never feel bad for it, for loving how behind her, he is disembodied.

“Come on, honey,” Vicrul's saying against her shoulder, urging while swiping his cock over her entrance. Trudgen is looking up into her face, watching her reaction. “Let me fuck this.”

When he pushes in, slicked and firm, she lets her eyes close, just ot take it. Her moans drive Trudgen into her.

“You feel so fucking good, scavenger.” Vicrul's gritting his teeth. He's been in every hole.

She's wedged, suspended between them, their strength easily holding her up. A small thing stretching to take them.

“He fucks you better than I do?” Trudgen is hungry for it, pleading.

Rey nods, eyes locked on his. Vicrul slaps her ass and she knows he heard. Knows he doesn't mind at all. His cock is coated with Kuruk's come, and he's using it.

“Is he going to make you come again?” Trudgen asks. He wants her to say it: that only the other knights really get her off. He's there incidentally, to feel the orgasm someone else gives her, feeling the better cock working alongside his.

“Yeah.” The sob in it is because as soon as he asks, she knows it's true. The way they're dropping her down onto their cocks is pumping it out of her. But she'll tell Trudgen it's not him. Not the way he's got her legs hooked over his bulging arms or the way he's holding her body against his, his pressure flawless on her clit.

It's a helpless orgasm. She's completely hung up between them, at the mercy of their speed and their cocks do exactly what she needs. Sopping sounds as they ram into her, using and taking and she can only let go with open-mouthed moans.

When it's over, she grabs Trudgen's bearded chin and gives a shake.

“I couldn't even feel you,” she lies. It's the push that gets him.

“Fuck,” Trudgen groans. “Fuck, I'm coming.”

Rey takes it, the plunging and the pulsing. His come filling her where others are going to fuck her and add to it. When he's done, he slides her off of him, and Vicrul brushes her loosened hair away from her neck, leaving a kiss there as he slips easily from her. With a coordination, they ease her down until her feet touch the floor again, and they hold her between them in a kind of embrace, with sweeping fingers and stroking, massaging hands. Trudgen's chest rises and falls against her cheek while Vicrul teases out a hidden soreness in her hips and instantly soothes it away. She reaches up to rake her fingers in Trudgen's beard and he presses a kiss to the top of her head. Vicrul pulls away with one last pat of her hips.

“Be right back.” He disappears into the adjoining refresher. The door hisses shut behind him.

“Thank you, Master,” Trudgen says. A crackling intimacy spikes their new solitude.

She could tell him: it's all made up. He feels incredible, makes her come in breathtaking waves; his eagerness makes her proud of her body and her words and her power. But they've built a scaffold that holds up a facade they both like, and she won't bring it crashing down with blunt reassurances.

Instead, Rey glances up at him.

“You know, don't you?” she asks. Has to make sure, carefully.

Trudgen's laugh has a depth and readiness that comes with being recently spent, still riding the euphoria of it. Hugging her to him, he sways her a little.

“Yeah, I do.” A final, quick squeeze before he lets her go. “Who's next?”

“Cardo,” says Rey. Come is trickling out of her and it's not enough yet.

He winks. “Good choice.”

While Trudgen collects his things and leaves, Vicrul returns with two glasses of water and hands one to Rey before downing his own.

A few gulps and she wipes her mouth off with the back of her wrist.

“Ready?” Vicrul asks, eyeing her as he takes the glass she passes back to him.

She nods and tries to push down her rising concern. He must feel it and guesses who's next, because he's urging her to the sofa again, thumbs working out the tension in her shoulders.

“Hey, I've got you,” he's murmuring, placating, as she sits between his sprawled legs. The warm solidness of him is something she can lean against. So she does, letting her head tip back until she finds his familiar amber scent. Vicrul's fingers are light between her thighs, a stimulating tickling that keeps her rush going. “I love hearing you.” The word is light in his mouth, his cock twitching against her lower back. Almost imperceptibly, his fingers work faster.

The door opens to Cardo, and he's half undressed already as he swaggers in. Helmet off, cock already out and rock hard. Every part of him is a bludgeon, from his powerful arms to his piercing eyes that bore into her, even from a distance.

“Listen to me, Rey,” Vicrul is telling her as he lies back a little, propped up by the padded arm of the furniture, dragging her with him. “We're not both going to fit. Just take him.”

Something like a balm washes over her, knowing that he won't let her be hurt unless she wants it. And this would be too much for her right now. Spread, Vicrul grips her thighs to hold her open. She's being offered up, and Cardo moves with heavy certainty, positioning himself to heave into her. Impatient, he leaves his pants on, letting them flap open, brushing Rey's legs.

Vicrul wraps his hand roughly around Cardo's cock, and gives a harsh, tight stroke. Without hesitation, Cardo bucks into it with a groan, staring at where Rey drips with Trudgen's come. A tattoo- four parallel, blocky lines—slashes across Cardo's hip as he pumps into Vicrul's tight hand. And Vicrul lets just a bit, just the swell of the head of his cock, push into Rey's wetness, then a little more. He's taking most of the battering strength of Cardo's burying thrusts with his hand, and it's still so much.

Cardo's eyes are fixed over her shoulder, and she knows his teeth are bared at Vicrul.

“I want to break her,” he tells him, his voice a rumbling thing.

“I know.”

Rey can't stop watching the way the tendons in Vicrul's forearm stand out as he grips. More and more of Cardo's length is going into her and coming out milky wet, coating Vicrul's fingers and making her gasp. It never gets to the stinging burn she knows Cardo can give her, but if she draws in her stomach, the bulging of his cock is a shifting, visible part of her.

Cardo holds the back of her head and when she meets his eyes, she finds that beastly need again, to take his come deep and let it pool inside of her. She'd let him bite her hard, let him pollute her any way he wanted. Pin her, tie her up and use her for days. Choke her. Call her anything.

Rey digs her nails into his back and scrapes and wonders if she's drawing blood, but his lip is curling like the sting of it is bliss by the time it reaches him and he's daring her to go harder. He smells like Greel-wood and ozone.

It's seamless—she barely notices when Vicrul moves his hand to her clit and she starts taking Cardo by herself. She just knows that she is stretched and soaking and her body can hold so much when she's this ready. Cardo brings his hand to her chest, spreads his fingers wide over her sternum to push her down against Vicrul.

“Is it enough?” Cardo growls as he fucks her, and he's close to breaking her like he wanted. The question catches her off-guard and his eyes bore into hers, angry, when she opens her mouth but doesn't answer. “I said is it _fucking_ enough?”

“Put your feet on him,” Vicrul says to her, like he can tell that they're near something. Cardo hears it too, because his thrusting gets urgent.

From the beginning, she has suspected he likes that, so Rey rests the sole of her foot on Cardo's tattooed hip, and it's like he ignites. He grabs for her ankle, bringing her foot up to his ravenous mouth, and his tongue slithers along her toes. Flexing in his hand, she wriggles her toes around his tongue; it makes his face soften, entranced and faraway.

He's so deep when he comes that Rey squirms on top of Vicrul, writhing as it erupts and floods her. Taking his come is all she can do, all she wants, and Cardo can barely hold himself up against the strength of it. It goes on for so long, and he stays for the last slow-gushing drops, gives a final thrust before he sloppily pulls out with a groan.

“Get some out for me,” he tells her, words like shreds. His fingers are waiting to catch the creamy slip of it when she pushes to let some escape.

Cardo's palm is wide and warm when he smears it over her breasts, her belly. Still unclaimed, but she's awash with him. He massages her feet and paints a thin streak of come along the arches, toes to heels.

“Stay off of these 'til I leave,” he tells her, finally starting to catch his breath. “They're perfect.”

She wishes she could see what he sees—venerable parts instead of unremarkable things she's never given a second thought to until now.

After tucking his cock back into his pants and clambering to his feet, Cardo points to the door.

“Ap'lek or Ushar?”

The next knight is less important than the final knight, Rey thinks. The one who will end it.

“Ushar.” She climbs off of Vicrul, keeping her knees on the cushion.

“You going to be alright if I use the 'fresher?” Vicrul asks her. It's not a flippant question: he's studying her face.

“Yeah.”

When the doors on opposite ends of the bedroom have both closed, Rey has a moment of stillness to herself, the eye of the storm. She takes a quick look down, surveying, and swipes a hand across her inner thigh to brush away the drips that are falling from her. Swollen, flushed. Impossibly wet, a mix of her and them. For days, she'll feel this. Just like she wants. And maybe she imagines that her breath echoes, that every other sound is gone except for the beginning of her name, soft and deep in Ben's mouth—

The door hisses open. Her hand falls from between her legs like she's been caught doing something, and Ushar waits for her to wave him in. Stepping over the threshold with an intentional slowness, he seems to fill the doorway.

“I want everything off,” Rey orders. The only knight she hasn't seen.

It looks like reluctance, but the Force creaks with his keenness, straining and fettered.

She expects anything else but the startlingly handsome man that's undressing in front of her. Before the mask, she thinks people must have followed him willingly into nighttime alleys, mistaking a good face for good intentions. He knows all about bait.

Only the shuddering coldness in his eyes is what she expected. But the large, green-flecked hazel irises are split by oval pupils and his unfamiliarity with human anatomy suddenly makes more sense.

“Bodyguard left you all alone?” Sneering. Taunting. It's anticipated.

“We both know I don't need one,” Rey says, ignoring the jab. “And I want you under me,” she adds, pointing to the bed.

As he walks past her, Ushar takes a lung-filling breath.

“No blood?” he asks before getting onto his back.

Taking him like this—one leg swung over him before she lowers herself down—feels more wicked than anything else they've done. A facsimile of intimacy, muddied and desecrated, as she takes his cock. His Force signature's ablaze with voracious want, but he doesn't touch her, fingers curled into the sheets at his sides.

“No blood,” she confirms.

She expected disappointment, but sees only a darkening in his inhuman eyes as she starts to ride him.

“Yet,” he says.

The refresher doors open. Vicrul stops by the large container to generously pump the clear gel into his hand.

“Not what I expected to see,” he admits. The bed dips behind her where he climbs on.

“Just following orders,” Ushar says. “And how are you still here?”

“Stamina.” Cock pushing with short, slicked strokes, and Rey relaxes, moans when he's back where she needs him. As much as Cardo crammed her full, there's no substitute for this. For his firm grip on her, for the driving hardness of two.

Ushar reaches to drag a single finger up between her breasts and stroke it along her neck, touching where Kuruk left a mark.

“Are we playing a game?” he asks.

Rey begins to turn to look at Vicrul, but Ushar steers her face back to him.

“I'm talking to you.”

It's up to her. Always. Vicrul will stay through it, and there's a prickle of curiosity from him. To see what they do together. To feel how her body responds around him.

“Yes,” she says.

For a while, Ushar does nothing. Just watches her getting fucked like it's a documentary on the HoloNet he's already seen, but the Force surrounding him simmers and he's so hard that she can't even begin to imagine what he's thinking about.

He rubs her earlobe with unnerving focus, holds his thumb precariously close to her eye so he can feel her eyelashes flutter when she blinks. He pinches her nose shut until her breathing has to come from gape-jawed panting and she can't stop to swallow so saliva gathers and dribbles out onto his chest, where he runs his fingers through it. He traces her stomach, where he caught her with the end of his club, months ago—to remind her. Finds a patch of Cardo's come and nudges his sticky finger into her navel, thrusting like he's fucking it. She whimpers, trying to pull back from the nerve-stabbing sensation, even as it tightens her muscles.

“Is this what you were waiting for on Jakku?” His words slink and crouch until she sees the horrible truth of it. That everything has led her here. That she's in the only place that will have her, and that she deserves what he gives her. He's generous with pain and he'll lavish it on her until she's had enough.

“Yes.”

It makes Ushar's cock twitch in her, against Vicrul's thickness, and he flicks her hard between two ribs and she fights the urge to flinch. Maybe the more they leave in her, the less she's herself. The more she gives, the more they'll take. Vicrul's sliding moves her up and down a little on Ushar's cock, and she wonders if it would ever get him there. He traces the tip of her nose, scratches his nail along the tender groove of her upper lip.

When she winces, Ushar pulls her down to him, pinning her against his chest. It changes the tilt and Vicrul groans, fingers digging into her hips. This close to Ushar's bare skin, the same spiced-sweet scent of him is strong, and—just for a fleeting moment—Rey wants to run.

“How much come are you making me fuck right now?” Ushar says, thrusting slowly but almost too hard. “It's dripping out of you, Master.”

The title is mocking. He releases her, letting her push back onto them both, and Rey takes the speed she needs. She won't think, won't wonder how it feels for them. Just uses their cocks like things. She could be like this all the time. Her hair hangs to curtain her face as she looks down at Ushar. At the scars that crisscross his arms and chest, from people who fought back. At the still-fading gash she left on his shoulder with her lightsaber. Roughly, he grabs her hair, close to the scalp. Tugs on it so he can see her.

“You'll lick this come off of me,” he tells her. “You're going to eat it, and then I'm going to fuck my favorite hole exactly how I like.”

Something glints in the darkness of his mouth. She's shaking with a building orgasm.

“Yes.”

He's not trying to titillate—he's just telling her what will happen. His disinterest makes her embarrassed to be getting this close, like she's the only one affected by the way their bodies are moving. Vicrul must feel it though, because he's cursing under his breath and fucking her harder.

She's slipping. Ushar's hand tightens in her hair.

“Don't come.”

It's so close. She can get there without him knowing—a silent tensing that looks like taking a break, she could turn to hide her face and pant like she's out of breath. Mask it with the Force. She can do it. She rides them harder.

Ushar slaps her hard across the cheek. The shock of it pulls her out of the rise. Vicrul's body is rigid behind her, waiting for her reaction. She growls in frustration.

“I said don't come on my cock.”

She glares down at him.

He locks his hands onto her waist, fucking up into her with a perfect angle.

“Don't do it,” he warns. He licks his bottom lip. His tongue is pointed and long when it unfurls, pierced just before it narrows.

“I can't—” It's just starting, the first fluttering waves.

He tears his cock out of her, holding her off of him as she twists, empty where she has to be full. She sobs, and Vicrul wraps his arms around her, grinding with his cock, but it's not hitting the same spot and she could scream with frustration at the terrible half-thing Ushar has done to her.

But he loves it. His eyes flash and he's biting his lip. Pushing with his legs to get out from beneath her and Vicrul. And, before it's done, when she's still surging with almost-pleasure, Ushar grabs her by the back of the head to bring her mouth down onto him. She's spanning the distance between the two of them, fucked from both ends. Her aggravated sounds stuffed by Ushar's cock, and he fucks what he's made. Hand on her throat, and he tilts his head to the side when Rey stares up at him. The bitterness of come coats his cock, rinsed by her mouth.

“You look like we're paying you.”

“Ushar,” Vicrul warns.

“It's true. You're nobody's master right now. Full of come and you can't even fucking talk—”

Rey pinches her fingers in the air, choking him. She sucks so hard, it makes the roof of her mouth hurt. The sounds coming from Ushar are frantic now, and his eyes roll back in ecstasy. His Force signature is an explosion of fear and triumph, the reward he's craved, and once she gets a taste of it, Rey wants to draw the life out of him. Tighter and tighter until the signature dims and Vicrul gives her leg pats that get more urgent as Ushar's eyelids start to drift closed.

“Rey!”

It brings her back. She releases the hold, gasping around his cock as he coughs. Ushar's hands immediately fist in her hair again like she's the shore he was pulled onto, sputtering and drowning.

“Gods, make it hurt,” he begs hoarsely. “I'm so close.”

Behind her, Vicrul groans and speeds up, his fingers dipping into her to fill her.

Rey bites down and watches Ushar shiver with pleasure at the sharp scrape. Hearing him pleading winds her up, and she's never been so rough with her mouth, punishing and reminding him that, even here—even fucked and gagging—they're hers. She'll have them however she wants.

Buried in the back of her throat, Ushar comes so hard that he stills completely, loudness breaking into quieter things that are so earned that Rey is already hoarding the memory. He pulls out before he's completely finished and stretches her bottom lip out to catch the last dribbling shudder that slithers from his cock. Rey licks it away.

“Swallow,” he says. “All of it.”

She does, and opens her mouth to show him that it's done. That it's inside of her. The game's over.

Behind her, Vicrul slides out of her abruptly, and Rey knows he was getting too close. That seeing her taking someone else with her mouth, after everything, was too much.

Standing at the foot of the bed, Ushar crouches so he's at her level, so close that their noses are almost touching. He's searching for something deep in her eyes, his elliptical, vertical black slits flicking between them, and for one confounding moment, Rey thinks he's going to kiss her. Instead, a slow, poisoned smile spreads across his face.

“I'd let you,” he says, almost to himself. “Only you.”

And then he's withdrawing and getting dressed, like nothing at all happened. Like he walked in, they spoke a few words, and that was it.

If he's ever been hurt by someone, it was a glancing blow, and Rey's a little jealous of the uncomplicated way he leaves.

The pause is silent.

“I don't want to be on the bed for this,” she tells Vicrul as she stands, not glancing at him. He just heard so much of her and she's not ashamed, but she feels exposed. “It's too soft.” The springiness of the sofa is easier to push off from, and—more importantly—if she gets into a bed with Ap'lek and Vicrul, she'll never go anywhere else. She'll live there.

Vicrul shambles to his feet and cradles her in his arms. Stiffening at first, at the gentleness of it in the midst of what she needs, Rey finally gives in, slumping against him.

“Whatever you want, Rey.”

While he caresses her back, he prods carefully with the Force. For injuries, concealed or overlooked exhaustion, for things she has to say. But nothing's there because she feels good, surrounded and feeding some desire that's been in her for a long time. She's past what anyone could reasonably crave, and it doesn't even feel like she's fucking them anymore. It's simpler than that—she's what they do. She's the doing.

She checks Vicrul, too. For questions he's holding back, things that are too much. For wanting to stop. But instead she finds answered questions, and not enough. Anticipation, still.

“I want you to keep going,” she says, breaking away from him to pull him over to the sofa.

On all fours, the sofa's fabric will leave faint woven impressions on her knees and shins and palms. And she forgot how remarkable she feels when he gets behind her just to look. Just to spread her with his hands and part her with his thumbs to see where she's been used by the others, and to know that he'll get her off. That he likes it when she's stretched and dripping, and he takes the come with clean fingers and uses it on his cock.

“I could fucking come just from looking at you right now,” Vicrul says thickly. “I bet you want him in your pussy, don't you? That's good. Give me more of this.” Her body's a tingling mass of numb delicate things and demanding, seeping depth. Well-aimed and practiced, he spits, and it lands exactly where she has to have him again. “Good girl. Want me to give you one?”

In answer, Rey pushes back against him. Her body takes so easily now, and Vicrul sets his pace with slow and careful strokes. Of all of them, he could do it, just like this. No touch anywhere else—only calibrated movement that gets to where she feels good.

“Let him hear you ask for it.” It doesn't matter who he means. The door opens and this is already in her veins like she knew it would be.

“Don't stop.”

Ap'lek stays back at first, near the door, soaking in the scene from behind his helmet. Rey can't imagine what she looks like, every part of her filled with come, countless orgasms in. With him, alone, she tries to be composed, to match his stealthy approaches. But here, she is long-undone and sheened with sweat. There is nothing to hide behind when he closes the distance and touches her tangled hair. Vicrul gives an out-of-rhythm, rocking thrust that stays deep and makes her moan, eyes wide when she recognizes the familiar rise.

“Feel it in your pussy?” Vicrul asks. He knows. “Yeah, push like that. You're gonna do it. Give it to me.” She looks up at Ap'lek, at the expressionless mask, and her gasping doesn't stop; his glove comes off so he can feel her breath against his fingertips, hovering a whisper away from her mouth. She hangs on to Vicrul's voice. “Keep looking at him while you come. He wants to see it.”

And it hits, clutching and dissolving in waves that she rides out. She lets them hear, lets them see and touch it. The moment it's over, Vicrul locks her hips between his hands and she can feel the quick-throbbing as he fights it. He's so close, he can't even pull out.

One long, rushing exhale and he holds it off, barely enough to withdraw. Rey looks back at him, over her shoulder to watch him dig his fingers into the muscles of his thighs, warring with his body's reflexes.

Turning back to Ap'lek, she could tell him that this might ruin her. That they might be all she can think about after this. But she forgot how he listens to what she doesn't say. With a meticulous pressing, he rolls her sensitive, slippery lips under his fingers.

“Ushar was too rough,” Ap'lek says quietly. There's unspoken reproach in it for Vicrul's lack of intervention.

“Well, Ushar almost got his cock bitten off,” Vicrul says conversationally, recovering and reaching over for another pump of lube. “And she choked him half to death. So I think they're even.”

Ap'lek huffs a laugh. He gives Rey's chin an affectionate brush with his thumb.

“Good.”

Something pleasant flutters in her stomach and she grins up at him.

He makes no move to undress or even remove his helmet, and Rey won't make him. Not here. Not when there's already no privacy and he prefers to stay in the background. Vicrul slips back into her. When Ap'lek sits, facing her, she doesn't bother muffling her jagged breathing or hiding how Vicrul's thrusts drive her body forward and his hands pull her back for the recoil. And when Ap'lek threads his legs between hers, she's shaking with wanting him. She reaches down to claw at the closure of his pants, to push aside the extra fabric. Won't apologize for the come that drips onto him. He helps her and his cock's out, but Rey wants to see his face again. Wants to get kiss-close while he's in her, but this is enough and she eases down onto him while Vicrul shifts to stay in. Ap'lek pushes up into her—deep, grinding thrusts that cover her in goosebumps and make her gasp.

“I know, honey.” Vicrul is matching the steady rhythm. “I know he's good. Just let him do it.”

She has needed Ap'lek like this for so long, feeling how he fucks her. And he is just as focused on her—just as responsive—as she imagined. He pushes the tip of his cock past everybody else's come to get to a place that's just for him.

Vicrul's palms blaze over her chest, cupping to feel how Ap'lek makes her move. “Love these,” he says. Clamps the peaks between his fingers until she begs for it harder, for all of it harder, afloat in her body and unable to go anywhere they don't take her.

“Harder?” Vicrul drags his hand up to her neck and, in the middle of her nodding, rests it gently on her throat, tipping her head back until she can see him, the arch of her spine flexing.

“Please.” She can barely get the word out, half a beat away from crying for it.

Ap'lek slides two fingers into her mouth, a teasing dipping. His other hand presses into the small of her back, supporting. Together, they fuck her differently. It's a continuous, rolling thing that's coordinated, crescendoing to something that shatters.

And when it breaks, she lets it seize her. Lets it hold her eyes shut, and lets Ap'lek's fingers stay while she moans, breathing hard through her nose, the weight of Vicrul's hand on her exposed neck.

“Fuck, you are both gonna make me come,” Vicrul says. He looks down at her, at her streaked tears and full mouth. At the flash of her tongue as she runs it between Ap'lek's fingers.

“Fuck.” He throws the word out like he's been burned, and glances away quickly, like her imploring eyes can take him over. “I'm done. I have to.”

It's the breakdown, the fraying edges of what he holds onto, but she loves the hint of regret. Like he could never have enough, but this is beyond his control. The groan-studded words keep coming from behind her as Vicrul pushes in as far as he can get. “Let me taste her mouth.”

Ap'lek takes his saturated fingers from between her lips and holds them so Vicrul can lick and suck and kiss what was in her. So he can know.

And he whispers, at the end. Into her ear. “I can taste you, scavenger.”

Arms wrapping, he releases with hard pulsing, so deep in her but the last seconds are quick, shallow thrusts, just inside her entrance. He pulls out, and Rey can feel the warm glide of his come spilling out, trailing down to where Ap'lek is fucking her.

The sofa shifts as Vicrul leans back to memorize the dripping emptiness of her after him, the perfectly battered parts of her. He carefully lifts her hair away to kiss her shoulder. “Good girl. Be gentle. Go soft at the end.”

And he gives them privacy, heading into the refresher.

Rey won't tear her eyes away from the hollow darkness where Ap'lek is watching her, wants to beg him to push it back into her. It's still unsaid when he eases his slick fingers into where Kuruk and Vicrul stretched her, to keep her filled even though it's just the two of them now.

She needs to see his body again, even if it's only slivers and glimpses, so she drags his shirt up to watch his core tense, smooth and chiseled. He traces the curve of her waist, his shudder something she feels more than sees. He's close.

Leaning down, Rey licks his helmet, metal tang on her tongue before resting her head on his shoulder.

“Please,” she says. “I want to hear you.”

Slowly, smoothly, Ap'lek flips their positions, his cloak covering them both as he settles into her body.

It's a hidden sanctuary, between them. Like he's helping her find her way through the dark. And Rey falls back into herself, reclaimed by the weight of him. A slight repositioning of her hips to bring pressure to her clit, and she's on another edge.

In her ear, his groans are low and soft and only for her, and she can't hold back when he sounds like that. She comes, clutching and secret beneath his cloak, hand clamped over her mouth so just her desperate breath can escape and she won't drown him out.

Only her name when he comes, a quiet exhale that's shaped like her. And he doesn't pull away when it's over. Not for a long time. Instead, he lies on her, comfortable. His sigh content. In the refresher, Vicrul rinses off in the shower, and they both listen to the rush and splash of water. Wishing she could play with Ap'lek's hair and stroke his skin and smell him, she settles for pressing his arms to feel the muscles under layers of fabric.

“The helmet...” he starts to explain, but then reconsiders the approach.

“Is fine.” Rey traces the dented dips of it. He had his reasons, and they're his business.

He smooths his fingertips over the ridges of her ear until the shower turns off. Finally, he climbs off of her and the air hits cold on her skin without him.

Vicrul walks in, stretching his shoulders. A wet towel is draped over his head before he gets back to briskly drying his hair. He opens his mouth to say something, but thinks better of it.

“Say it.” Ap'lek sounds like he already knows, like he expected this.

“That just wasn't your usual,” Vicrul says, light but guarded.

“She's not my usual.”

Rey can't help it: she perks up at the thought of any of them with other people, doing what they do with her. But especially him.

“Fair enough.” Vicrul turns to Rey and nods to the refresher. “Want to rinse off?”

She's oozing. She likes it, but it can't go on forever.

“Yes. Have everybody in here when I'm finished.”

Vicrul's eyes widen, just slightly, and Rey stiffles a laugh.

“Not for more,” she clarifies.

“Good, because I think I'm done for the night,” Vicrul admits.

“That's not your usual,” Ap'lek says quietly and, this time, Rey can't hold back her laugh as she disappears into the refresher.

Steaming over her stretched muscles and friction-rasped skin, the water rinses away most of what fills and coats her. She soaps herself carefully until she's just her clean-scented body again, regrounded.

When she gets out, dried off and relaxed, and opens the door to her quarters, the knights are waiting. Easy talking that dies down when she arrives. Various states of undress, and most have changed into looser clothes she's only rarely seen.

“No one is to return to the _Steadfast_ until tomorrow. You are all welcome to sleep in here tonight.” She peers over at the massive bed. It's big enough. Probably.

“I'd like that,” she adds, softening her tone. “As always, it's not an order.”

As they start to shuffle, Ushar catches her eye and inclines his head in a quick bow before heading into the hallway. Rey doesn't notice Ap'lek leave, only registers his absence as the other knights get situated on the bed, leaving a space in the middle for her.

Kuruk and Trudgen nestle against her sides, meshing all of their legs together until it's comfortable. Vicrul's arm sneaks over Trudgen's head to run his fingers through her hair as he yawns. Cardo sprawls happily at the foot of the bed.

Their movements gradually slow. Cardo's strokes on her calf get uneven, with lengthening pauses, until he falls asleep. There's an odd sense of accomplishment, like she's completed a trial or bested an opponent. But it's temporary, and she will always feel absences within company.

Surrounded by them, warmed even in the night-cooling ship by the heat of their bodies, Rey has the terrible realization that loneliness can fit in any room. It winds around her, and settles beneath her skin, where it has always lived. Soft snores and draped limbs can't keep it at bay, and her eyes stay open and tear-stung for far longer than she would ever admit. Finally, in the floating prison ship, she mentally prods the bond with Ben. She wonders if he can feel it, wherever he is. And it is thinking of him, of his hand reaching for hers and the simple touch, that finally makes her drift off.

* * *

She's the first to wake up, after a short night of restless dreams and jabbing elbows. With careful climbing, she disentangles herself and slips from the room. The corridors of the _Night Buzzard_ are narrow and dark. Albrekh isn't on board; his workshop waits, depleted and unoccupied, as its tenant gathers materials on Umbara to restock it.

On the way to the bridge, an open doorway reveals an austere bunkroom. Ushar is sprawled naked in one of the beds, his foot hanging off the side, wrapped in the blanket he's kicked off. Even in his deepest, drooling sleep, he clutches his mace to his chest. The twisted affection that bubbles up in her is enough to make Rey lean against the doorframe.

He's not intimidating here, uncovered and unaware. She lets her eyes wander over his body, feeling the soreness he left in the back of her throat. Maybe the knights are hers all the time, and she can wake them up to talk, to stave off the forlorn hours of breaking morning.

He's watching her. His breathing doesn't even change; the only indication that he's awake is the tracking flit of his eyes.

“Sorry, I was just...”

“Looking for something,” Ushar finishes for her, voice gravelly with sleep. Rey hates that he's right, and hates even more that she can't name it. Disinterested, he yawns and scratches the stubble that roughens his face before he flips over. “It's not in here, Master.”

Exiled and embarrassed, she leaves. The bridge is occupied, too. They're locked onto the _Steadfast_ and piloting consists of occasionally diverting power to charge up a drained shield or responding to a rare question from another nearby ship. Behind his helmet, Rey thinks Ap'lek might be sleeping in the pilot's seat, alone in the shadowy room, but when she quietly plops down into the seat beside him, he gives her a nod of acknowledgment.

“Master.”

She lets the formality pass without comment because it feels good to hear.

Trying to get comfortable only helps her find new, intimate aches. She settles for propping her feet up on a buttonless edge of the console and leaning back.

Maybe he sees her wince.

“How are you?”

“Can't sleep,” she says. It's true. She's also stretched, but she likes that.

Ap'lek makes a noise of understanding.

Looking out through the windows, Rey points her toe at the enormous, silent-coasting Star Destroyer alongside them.

“Nobody I care about is on that.” She swivels her chair a little back and forth.

“Is that an order to fire?”

She grins and, sluggish with sleep she didn't get, lets her head loll against the headrest to study him.

“That's not how I would do it,” she says.

“No,” he agrees. “Not you.”

The comparison is unspoken and Kylo, impulsive and reckless and gone, is suddenly on her mind. Again.

“How did he escape?” Rey asks. There's no need to clarify, and she keeps her voice soft, inquisitive. Like she hasn't known the truth since it happened, an early betrayal she hasn't been able to forgive or understand. And maybe she’s been punishing him for it, in her own way. “You disobeyed my orders, Ap'lek.”

He reaches over to toggle a switch, siphoning off power from a ventral shield.

“You weren't our master yet. I disobeyed nothing.”

“I became Supreme Leader the moment he abdicated.” Her voice rises.

“That doesn't mean anything to us,” he says simply. “The First Order can burn.”

In the silence that follows, she watches the _Steadfast_ with new eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not content to blow our collective minds just once, [@HouseOfFinches](https://twitter.com/HouseOfFinches) drew Vicrul/Rey/Cardo. It is NSFW, brain-meltingly hot, and can be found [here on twitter](https://twitter.com/HouseOfFinches/status/1348853583157071872). I can barely keep it together, honestly.


	5. Home

She's alone in her quarters aboard the _Steadfast_ , hair damp from a post-training shower. The shirt she found folded in the closet hides her body in oversized draping, and no matter how far she pushes the sleeves up, the cuffs fall to cover her fingers as she swipes through the datapad packed with daily reports. But the fabric is soft and lived-in and the wide neck is a comfort after tight-throated armor. She paces as she skims.

The Force crackles and spikes, and when Ben turns around, he sees her. There is a moment—and it stretches out like distance—that leaves them where they are. They could stay here and change nothing, and he can be the one who did better and she can be the loss. She can be the one with the motherless, death-covered name and he's the one who returns late but nonetheless, and it was _always_ supposed to be like this.

And she doesn't know when it happened, but somewhere along the strange way to here, she stopped deserving him. Anger-faded, she’s sure now that this is exactly what she saw, fingertips over flame: him. Lavishly, world-movingly bright. And not for her.

Ben doesn't speak, just crosses over to her with fast, determined strides until they collide. He catches her face between his hands and Rey is too surprised to react when he presses his lips to hers, walking her back until they bump into her desk. She barely has time to fumble, blindly setting the datapad down behind her before she pulls him in to the fusing kiss.

It's a wave that crashes over both of them, and she's just as in it as he is. Just as heat-swept and impatient-handed, their bodies pressing and shifting to get closer, like a guilty dream that will wake her up with her fingers between her clamped legs. Ben is heavy against her, huge and solid and grounding. When he drags his hand up her bare thigh to rest on her hip, she pitches into him. And, because this will be a one-time regret for him but a theft for her, Rey keeps tasting him—dipping her tongue and moving her lips. Here is the only place she needs to be, with him caught in her arms. He tastes like somewhere she wants to sit and watch passing clouds, like a place she'll swim. One day. One day, for a very, _very_ long time. Because he's a memory of a home she hasn't been to yet, and she can do anything but give up.

And with the same tearing intensity that he started it, he ends it, stepping back completely and letting her slump against the air where he held her, both breathless.

They stare.

Instead of talking about what they just did, Ben runs his hand through his hair and nods to her. “Mine?”

Somehow it's the most terrifying thing she's ever been asked. Confused, she opens her mouth to respond before she knows what to say, tongue-tripped and blush-ignited.

“The shirt,” he adds.

“Oh.” The bolt of shock wears off instantly into an odd disappointment as she looks down at the black cloth. It's his, of course, and the answer bounces around in her mind.

_His, of course._

“I found it.” Rey points to the closet door before she remembers that he can't see it and lets her hand fall. Embarrassed, she can't meet his eyes. It's a forgivable practicality on her part, but he wasn't supposed to recognize it. And he shouldn't be looking at her like that.

“Rey, do they kiss you?”

It knocks the wind out of her, the bluntness and speed and the fathoms of yearning in his voice.

“Only Ap'lek.” It's none of his business, but she tells him anyway. “Some of the others try but I don't let them.”

A pause.

“Do you love him?”

“Ben, it's just kissing. It doesn't mean anyone's in love.” It lands harder than she meant it to, her lips still tingling from his own searing kiss.

“But sometimes it does.”

Needing a response that doesn't require breath because that's gone again, she shrugs, playing with the shirt's cuff.

“Why only him?” Ben asks, and she has to assume he wants to be hurt. And the answer is simple. It's why she came here at all.

“He reminds me of you.”

The silence is so absolute that she can hear the Force. Not the vibrating hum that it makes when they connect, but the indescribable swirling beneath.

“I'm on Ahch-To,” he says finally. “Alone.”

* * *

“Please sit,” Rey says to them. It's an order softened now by affection and familiarity. The knights are her ears and eyes, but she's caught bits of whispers of this on her own while walking past clusters of stormtroopers.

The small meeting room isn't the usual one. Nondescript, it's in the engineering wing, between the reactor core and crew quarters. After setting up a signal jammer and doing a thorough sweep to check for spy droids, it feels safer than anywhere close to the command bridge.

“What is Operation Ysalamiri?”

They share glances. Ushar is the first to speak, bland and practical, and it almost hides the horror of what he says.

“New covert First Order initiative to identify Force-sensitive sentients. We're still gathering information, but we think the goal's eradication.”

“Enemies of the First Order.” Rey says it instead of asking, because the alternative is senseless and impossible.

The quiet that follows is bone-chilling, and Rey's thoughts stutter to a halt. When they start up again, they are a storm of rage and certainty.

Trudgen clears his throat.

“From what we can tell, they're not going to be picky,” he says. “We're working on the report. We wanted to be sure before we told you.”

Rey clicks her teeth together and feels her nose wrinkle as she snarls.

“Who did this?” Her words are hushed, but the threat is clear. The outcome will be inevitable.

“The Supreme Council, day before yesterday.”

She rises before he finishes speaking.

* * *

Rey studies their blank faces, trained into masks of insipid curiosity and obedience. The current of fear in the enormous room is tangible, a kind of torrential but hidden frenzy, and she can't believe she didn't pick up on it sooner. Blinded by arrogance, she assumed it was simply her presence that did it. But now she understands that it's a fear of discovery.

“I called this meeting for a detailed update on our current operations.” She gives the members of the Supreme Council and the gathered officers a small, measured smile, like usual. She wants to be wrong. Behind her, Trudgen rests his hand on her chair and, where nobody else can see, gives her back a comforting swipe with his finger.

Quick to respond, General Engell gets to her feet.

“Of course, Supreme Leader. I'd be happy to start.” She projects a scrolling list: stormtroopers, divided by squadron; sections for sergeants and squad leaders, engineers and council members. “As you know, we are expanding our personnel database.” Engell taps a number to display a trooper's file. The image is of a delicately featured young woman, with short curly hair and light eyes. “Medical records are now fully linked, and results of all physical fitness testing are charted—”

“What's a midi-chlorian count?” Rey interrupts, pointing to a red highlighted line in the trooper's bloodwork results.

A rush of panic is stamped down, and the general tries to appear nonchalant as she cranes her neck to read it, as if she's never noticed that part before. And Rey wants to give her the benefit of the doubt, but the dread doesn't have a drop of regret in it.

“I'm afraid medical issues aren't really my area of expertise, ma'am.” There are a few muffled laughs and Engell's grin is humble, like she'd love to help if only she weren't so uninformed.

Rey's eyes snap to hers.

“I won't repeat the question,” Rey says.

The stillness in the room is sudden and complete.

“I'm not entirely sure, ma'am. I was told by a chief medical officer—” At the other end of the room, Rey senses somebody sink back into the crowd. “—that it could potentially indicate future programming resistance.” A sheen of sweat begins to dot Engell's forehead.

“Show me mine.”

“Supreme Leader, medical information is extremely private—”

Rey gestures impatiently to the projection. “You had no problem displaying this woman's record to a room of strangers. Did DN-7497 give you authorization?”

The general sputters, backpedaling, her usual poise crumbling.

“I just mean that a medical professional should be the one to go over your record with you.”

“Show me.”

Ashen, the general taps numbly to enter passcodes, and in moments, Rey's file is pulled up. Several council members reposition themselves in their seats. Her photo has a thick red border. It was taken early—just a day or two after she arrived—and in it, her jaw is biting-tight, eye sockets darkened by lack of sleep, and her irises still sparking with gold. Unlike the previous stormtrooper's record, Rey's menstrual cycle is prominently tracked, with _“Not Pregnant”_ in bold directly beneath her picture, along with the dosage of her fertility suppressants and small red-outlined photos of each knight.

It makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She feels like an experiment and, as she stares at the six pictures under hers, tells the knights through the Force: that they are hers and she will paint the floor with anybody who tries to hurt them. Enraged, she is a fast-blinking detonator.

But she wants to see the reaction before she goes off. To prod the fear and see if it lashes out at her when their plans go awry.

“Well, that needs to be updated,” Rey says dryly, turning to smile at the knights. Vicrul's laugh is alive and it's hard to believe that, not so long ago, she had never heard it.

The entire table pulls back from her, like the whole room is recoiling. She's an escaped test subject, a prisoner who isn't supposed to know she's trapped. Alligent General Pryde recovers first.

“A joke, I'm sure,” he says, grinning stiffly, and his face looks unaccustomed to the act. But it's enough to assuage the table. “Such a happy announcement would be made immediately.”

The implication is that the sharing wouldn't involve her permission. Hackles raised, she flings words at him.

“Do you plan on being in the room when it happens, General?”

“I very nearly was,” Pryde says, his typical imperious frown returning at the memory of the tiny, humid debriefing room.

“Learn to knock.” Rey twists her ring around her finger, recalling his enthusiasm about her lineage. Other failed experiments, no doubt. Still focused, she turns back to General Engell. “I'd like to see my midi-chlorian count.” She doesn't know exactly what she's looking at or if she’s saying it correctly or what it means, or even if it matters. She only knows that she feels nauseated and that everything in her is telling her to keep going.

“That's not necessary,” Pryde says, holding out a hand to stop the general.

Rey silences him with a glare.

The line is highlighted with a much darker red, and the number is bigger, and she wants to crush every single person at the table who is currently attempting to look confused or concerned for her health.

A deep breath steadies the shake threatening her voice.

“Is that a measure of Force sensitivity?”

The general won't meet her eyes. None of them will. To her left, somebody excuses themselves, mumbling something about the refresher.

Rey brushes her fingers through the air, and the click of the doors' locks is the only sound.

“I'd like an update on Operation Ysalamiri,” she says. The whispering starts and Rey wonders when they noticed that the people in attendance are far from random.

General Quinn is ready with an answer, contempt coating his words. It's not clear if he's oblivious or just so full of disdain that he doesn't care.

“Supreme Leader, it's a highly classified information-gathering program intended to eliminate any potential threats to your power.” Now she feels it: his hatred and disgust when he looks at her and the knights. He doesn't know he's carrion. “You'll be pleased to hear that we've tracked the former Supreme Leader to a remote section of the Unknown Territories. Attempting to hide, no doubt. With your permission, we'd like to deploy a search party...”

Rey has stopped listening. Because it feels like her entire body is beating along with her heart. She was going to do it anyway, she'll tell herself later. That it was the thought of lists of frightened people, confused about what they did wrong, that made up her mind.

But it's the threat of somebody getting to Ben before she does that makes her do it this way. Clean and calm. It will take something from her, but she would give more than that to end this. All of this. And he may never know or care, but she would unfold the galaxy for him, crack it open and let him eat it like a juice-dripping offering. Her hand twitches under the table.

In their veins, their blood turns to powder. Desert-dry and packed, but it takes them a few seconds to notice.

They react differently—some gag and cough, some clutch at the peculiar flutter in their chests, and others sway in place as their vision goes dim around the edges. They drop at different times, too—collapsing to the floor or slumping over in their seats, and it's strange how little she feels from it. It's no victory, no vengeance. She expected a flood of something, but she's left with a grim knowledge that she's doing what has to be done. That this is an overdue, gruesome, fated correction, utterly without heroes. There will be no celebration: this place was always going to be a tomb.

When it's still, Rey gets up from the table. The knights hesitate, disbelieving, as they look around the decimated room.

“Let's go,” she orders. “There are more.”

* * *

The planet's surface is sprinkled with cities that grew into one matted grid. In favorite cantinas, First Order generals huddle in rented private rooms that tinkle with bottles and conversations. Medical officers laugh around casino tables, relaxed and confident.

The Knights of Ren and their master find them all before word spreads from the aimless First Order ships drifting, uncommanded and unaligned, above the planet. Before they discover wiped records and blank databases and crippled navigation, before it becomes clear that essential tactical maps, internal intelligence communications, current stormtrooper reconditioning data, and concealed weapons locations have been broadcast to the Resistance.

And, finally, she sees what the knights can do. As a marauding pack, they crush and hack with the precision of practice and more than a little enjoyment. When they split up and fan out, they move, unstoppable, through alleys like a purging tide that finds and ends. She knows the bodies underneath but, in this, they are all there is of their own matchless kind.

The task seems insurmountable, but she has ripped apart the foundation and the walls are bowing, precariously close to collapse. The knights know the job ahead and she doesn't need to give the order to hunt, to kick apart the machinery until every piece can be found in the trampled dirt. To spare the ones who had choice taken from them long ago, but to instead find the ones with claws.

Already, her lightsaber is a beacon, and everyone has caught her scent. Tracking fobs will point toward her and the bounties will come soon enough; the best she can do is draw them off, leaving the knights to do the real work until the Resistance can recalibrate and find unexpected allies. The trail to Ahch-To has been swept away completely, and it is undiscovered again.

The empty _Night Buzzard_ is docked in a private hangar, like an island in a lull, and Rey makes her way back to it through the chaos.

Even without an audience, it's more of a ritual than she expected, each moment heavy with what she's shedding. The undoing is intentional, and the things that she gathered over time are placed with care on a table, one at a time. The helmet. She dismantles the lightsaber, leaving the parts so they can see that it was only ever a tool. The kyber crystal hums in her pocket. She knows that, even cracked and corrupted and bled, it can be healed.

And now for what she's been putting off: the gift, not the scavenged things. She won't think about when she got it, of all the times she noticed it until it seemed like less of a thing and more like a promise.

She tugs the ring from her finger. It clinks when she places it on the table next to the pieces of the black lightsaber hilt. She traces the outline of the dark stone one last time—a habit she'll miss. But going has a cost, and sometimes beautiful things have to be left behind.

In the corner, there's movement. Unlike the first time, on the Resistance base, Rey isn't startled. He has been hers, and she relaxes as he approaches noiselessly. That his unsettling, measured movements have become soothing to her is nothing short of miraculous.

Ap'lek removes his glove and brings his hand up to touch her cheek. Her eyes drift shut, just for a second, and she leans into him. He's making this all so much harder, but she doesn't want him to stop. His thumb sweeps over her bottom lip, memorizing her.

She's still unsure about how much he can sense through the Force, but she does it anyway.

That they're free and always were—they don't need a master. That there is a dawning balance for them. That she won't hurt them after this; that they can find her one day, if they want, but it will be different. That he was so close to her. That thanking him is too big and she doesn't have the right words.

Ap'lek gives a small nod and he drops his hand to pull his glove back on. And maybe she has underestimated his abilities, because he pushes things back to her, too.

That they'll always be hers, a little; and they'll be fine. That they won't hurt her or Ben. That they knew she would go and it's okay.

That no one has been closer to him than her. That he doesn't want to leave this time, either.

Rey is crying, fighting the urge to cling to him.

“Did I hurt you?” His voice is so soft.

“No. Not once.”

He nods again, then turns to rejoin the others in the fray, soles of his boots as silent as they had once been on her bedroom floor.

Rey feels them move deeper into the city, a drifting home that she sacrificed so much for. Fortifying and spine-strengthening, they grew her in ways she will spend years discovering. They will never be unknowable to her, if their paths should cross again in silent forests or stinging blizzards or packed cities. Because she has seen enough of life and death to know that leaving is a pause, not a severance.

Their Force signatures fade with distance and she is alone for the last time.

In the after-stillness, she glances back at the ring. Light catches on the stone, setting the hidden blue ablaze, scintillating and generous. Different now, but hers all along. She takes it, replacing it on her finger, its weight a part of her.

The only thing she needs now is a ship.

* * *

It's late morning when she lands on Ahch-To, a clear and wind-swept day. Serrated cliffs erupt from the ever-changing sea and she wonders if he recognized it. The abandoned First Order TIE fighter she found, freshly dinged by tiny asteroid fragments she hadn't bothered avoiding in her rush, rests beside a T-85 X-wing. Legs stiff, Rey climbs unsteadily down from the cockpit and the solid, familiar ground seems to swing beneath her feet.

An unmistakable figure, tall and agile, storms over weathered rocks and patches of vibrant grass. She braces herself. “Angry” was a possibility she prepared for on the way over, and there's a speech for it, right between “dumbfounded” and “disgusted.” She just can't remember it because Ben Solo is in the same air as her.

“Rey, what did you _do_?” Awed and accusatory, like she, the apostate, has brought the cataclysm to his doorstep. A feeling close to guilt creeps in because Ben's hanging back and he hasn't slept, eyes circled dark as he scans the deserted sky above them. She was meticulous in concealing her destination, but this is all because of her. “My holotransmitter is completely jammed.”

It's not a lightsaber he's holding as he gestures, but a blaster, and it fits him. All of this fits him: shaggy hair and sea mist. Isolation and rough-woven wool and the smoke of a smoldering driftwood fire.

It's so hard not to smile. At him, in front of her. Really in front of her, with no chance of interruption and nothing the sever them.

“Ben.”

But it won't be that easy. His gaze darts to the ring, and the questions furrow and stack but he doesn't get to any of them before she speaks.

“I left.”

“They let you?”

Rey crosses her arms. This isn't going the way she planned.

“Seems to be a bit of a tradition,” she shoots back.

Something starts to tug at the corner of his mouth, just the tiniest snag, but seriousness takes it over before it can spread. “I meant the First Order.”

She's not sure how to say it if he hasn't heard this already from the transmitter. It's a long ramp that ends in a chasm, and she can only jump.

“There is no First Order, Ben.”

It's visible, the way he's piecing together the bits he heard and what he certainly felt and what she's saying. “Did you...”

“They knew where you were.” It's almost that simple, but she keeps going. “And everyone Force sensitive. There's no council or generals or...” There's no skeleton. “The knights helped.” It's too wrenching to leave the words in the past, and Rey reminds herself that they will be alright. The kyber is strange music against her thigh. “Are helping,” she adds.

Ben wipes his hand over his mouth, like he can erase the horrible things that have happened, and nods.

“And you're here?”

“I'm here.”

His eyes are wild with something enormous, almost glazed with it. Pleading. He holsters the blaster, steps closer. “Rey.”

She can't stop drinking him, and she needs this but it's so soon. The journey still tumbles in her stomach and the tingling in her legs is only just starting to slow.

But his timing has always been awful, and for once, she doesn't mind. When his lips crash against hers, it's all warmth and hard breathing, mouthed-parting greed and grabbing. Rey's arms fall to her side and she lets go. And maybe he can feel what she has hidden from herself: that she is shaped like him everywhere empty. He's picking her up and she's still in shock but her body takes over because it knows exactly what to do—fingers knotting in his hair, legs locking around him. She's wanted this for so long that it feels unreal when his tongue slides with hers, without distance.

And it's him: that soul-deep memory of his smell; the exact taste of his open, salt-sweet mouth. The homecoming of his skin. She was never anywhere before here, she thinks. She draws her first breath only now, twenty years late. Because she has known him since she first saw light; she was born with a part of him. They were created bonded, and this has been a knowing circling. And, finally, at the center, is them.

She's only distantly aware of the fact that he's walking, carrying her past a group of Caretakers paused in their work to openly gawk. His steps are bumping as he crosses over the threshold of a domed hut and, as soon as they're alone, he sets her down with a ripping, ravenous hunger. He tugs at the closure of her belt and she's too caught to laugh as she unclips it for him. The things they're wearing are the final obstacles, suddenly unbearable, but she'll allow things to stay if it gets him in her any sooner.

She bites his lip and drags until he groans, and it's even deeper than his voice. He's peeling off layers of his smoke-clinging clothes while his kisses rain over her like drops.

Rey is tearing at her pants, trying to kick them off, all of her senses thrumming with adrenaline. Her heartbeat slams in her ears. The strength of him is astounding when it's used like this, to surge against her with vital need, until they're both pushed onto on something wide with a cushioned give and she doesn't even care what it is. Breathlessly, she breaks the kiss to speak.

“What are we doing?” She's still wearing her shirt and still has so much to say, and he was supposed to be unsure if he could trust her after everything. He was supposed to hesitate, and they would work up to this. Instead, she is a stolen ship, cargo hold full of contraband, that he's learning to fly after it's already taken off.

“Shhh, keep going.” He doesn't know either, delirious with craving. The creamy skin of his chest and shoulders is familiar to her, but not like this. Not nakedly needing her, and not at the start of touching that doesn't have to end. Not with her bare legs parted and him getting above her. “We'll go slow later.”

_Later._ There will be a later, and countless agains. But this is the first of them. Through a tiny crack in the stone wall, sunlight beams in, speckled across his collarbone as he moves. She'll map the constellations on his skin soon enough. Using her lips, she'll never do it to own him. Only to sigh at the night sky of him until she is threadbare-shivering in awe.

He's touching her, making a sharp sound when he feels how wet she is. When he pushes fingers into her, she's giving throaty gasps, and his mouth is back on hers to taste the way she's taking him. He breathes in her exhalations, sipping in her used air and giving it back to her until it's alive again and her lungs are full of only him.

Rey closes her hand around his wrist, thrusting him and there's no time for finesse. Only fullness. It could be the novelty of new fingers, she tells herself. His are thick and calloused and strong and, after a moment to orient, they find exactly how to move, but she knows better. It's that he's kissing her with eyes open, like he's not going to waste a second of being so close to her. It's that waves of triumph and need and something soft are pouring off of him, and she's the only thing he has to have. The orgasm starts to build fast, a cresting that begins deep in her hips, until—

Ben withdraws his fingers, slicking them over his cock, and positioning himself between her legs. Rey glares up at him. She was so close.

Through the bond, she feels it: he knows, he'll give it to her. But he wants her to peak like this, to feel her fade away beneath him for the first time. And when Ben pushes in with a quenched groan, it all makes sense. Nothing could fill her like this. He's everywhere and he's not even moving, can't keep it together enough to thrust. Eyes distant while his jaw works like he's trying to say something and their bond is suddenly crackling, a vibrating thing that pulls her into him, where she already is. Where she has always been, interwoven. Rey moves, rolling her hips, and it brings him back. The pace is erratic at first, broken and shaky, like he's too shocked at the feeling of her to even think about impressing anyone. Ben shoves her tunic up, impatiently loosening the band around her chest to expose her breasts. Cupping and gently pulling, she can't fill his hands, but he's scooping her like he's dreamed of this. Looking down at her, he brings his fingers lightly to her neck, outlining the healing bruise that Kuruk left with his mouth while he was inside of her.

“Don't move. Just... keep it right there.” His cock is seated deep, a thing for her to grip.

“Ben, please.” She's not above asking to be fucked. She'll demand it if she has to, or do it herself. But a low urgency parts his lips.

“Who felt the best?”

All of the oxygen is gone.

“Ben—”

“Did they take turns?” When she doesn't answer, reply stuck, he traces her ear. “Please tell me, Rey. I like it.”

It tumbles out. “Once.”

He's looking at her like she's a new planet to explore. “Where did they come?”

“Everywhere.”

His exhale is a ragged huff.

“You let them fuck everything?”

“Yeah.” She clenches at the fresh memory, the ghosts of their touches on her skin.

He digs his fingers into her hip to keep her still.

“Don't move or I'll come,” he warns. Then, when he regains his composure— “Keep talking.”

“Vicrul let me call him Ben.” His self-control immediately slips, and he jolts inside of her. She keeps going. “He fucked me in your bed when it still smelled like you and told me to come on your cock.”

“Fuck.” He can't hold back, and when he finally thrusts, it's with strokes that use the whole length of him, and every time he's almost out, she wonders how perfectly he'll fit back in. Indescribably, buryingly, and her body yields and tries to hold him in with shuddering tightness.

“Did you?” he asks.

Rey nods, her face hot. He's going to make her do it again. For real, this time, and she still can’t believe it's him in her.

The orgasm she didn't have is close by, a thread that unravels her. He's all devouring certainty now, an undulating, melting deliberateness. Tongue rolling over the mark on her skin, left by someone else's sucking kiss. Her fingers scrape over his back and she's coming with an open loudness. He doesn't speed up, doesn't change the angle—only lets his head stay in the curve of her neck, breathing hot while he draws the orgasm out of her like it can pour into him. And maybe it can, because in the middle of the fragmented blankness, she can hear his deep, emptying sounds. Can feel the explosion of it through the bond and the scattering sparks that flicker out into darkness.

When she kisses him, it's sluggish and spent, and Rey lets out a content sigh when she realizes that their lives are a mess, somewhere behind them. Far behind them. Here, finally, things are so clear, with him sliding off to settle next to her on his bed.

“I want to hear everything they did.” He would swallow her whole if he could.

“I wasn't there _that_ long, Ben. I'll run out of stories.”

He twirls a lock of her hair between his thumb and forefinger. “Maybe they can visit.”

Her laugh is half scandalized, half delighted.

“Ben Solo, that's...” The right word doesn't seem to exist.

“I know. But I mean it.”

She grins and swats loosely at him. Ben catches her hand and kisses her fingers one by one, with an extra, firm kiss for the ring. Rey relaxes into his touch. When he starts on the inside of her wrist, she glances around the hut.

“We're going to have to stay here for a while, aren't we?” she asks, resigned.

“Oh, yeah.” He doesn't sound at all concerned. Reluctantly, he releases her hand. “Want to help me make a bigger bed? Just so we don't have to sleep on top of each other for the rest of our lives.”

“Doesn't sound so bad.”

It was meant to be a light teasing, but it hitches at the end because she can see the all of the doors she didn't open. And some of them have less pain, but she was so close to worse.

Ben's gaze is full of the truth of where they are and she could live here forever, touching his silky hair and remembering when she only had a single strand.

“It doesn't, does it?”

* * *

A storm rages on Ahch-To as Rey stirs in her sleep and curls closer to his warmth. Her lips press softly against his broad shoulder.

Just before sunrise, they're both awake, her slim body scooped into his, his arms around her while his hardness nudges her open. Slow and sleepy, he rains kisses along her neck, and when he pushes in, his teeth catch at her shoulder, a sucking that hones her and marks her in a new way. She is licked dew.

It's a tiny story in the end. All of the fighting fades at the places where their skin meets. It always has.

She doesn't know if she's forgiven for the terrible things she's done. Doesn't even know if she can apologize yet. But here, in an ancient hut under a brightening sky, she is bathed in something that doesn't know right or wrong. It knows only sublime balance and ceaseless love. It acknowledges only that they are together, that their winding paths are one.

And quietly, in the vast distance of space, a much bigger thing than them aligns and there is peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Main story is complete. If you like this Reylo HEA, then this is your stop!
> 
> But if the _“Maybe they can visit.”_ line got your attention, you miss the knights, and would like a poly Reylo+6 HEA, stick around for the epilogue chapters! I'll be adding tags.


	6. After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first chapter of the epilogue! The poly reylo stuff begins here.
> 
> Check out this chapter's end notes for relevant, additional, and clarified tags for the entire epilogue.

* * *

_Three months later_

The best place to eat breakfast on Ahch-To is the low, wind-worn stone wall she's sitting on. Waves foam on the beach far below, the sea stretching into the distance.

Beside her in the morning sun, Ben looks up from a datapad to watch Rey swing her feet, her heels bouncing against the ancient rocks. “Ap'lek says hi.”

Rey manages to not choke on her caf, but can’t stop the unavoidable warmth that flushes her skin. She knows he's in contact with them, along with the once-again Senator Organa. Business, she assumed, and doing the strange work of building new things. Certainly not thinking about her, after what she did.

And _definitely_ not passing tentative greetings along.

“Oh. That's...” She's utterly unprepared for this, and the slow grin that spreads across Ben's face makes her think it's obvious. “...nice. Tell him I said hi.”

“I will. Anything else?” The glint in his eyes is all the encouragement she needs to play along.

“Tell him I miss his fingers,” she begins, touching her neck where the feeling of him never really goes away. Ben's inhale is sharp between his teeth. It always makes the memories ache, to talk about Ap'lek and the distance he loved to swallow up in increments—distance that now stretches so far that she doesn't expect him to miss her. It's easier to talk about the others. Rey can’t imagine any of them spending more than a fleeting moment thinking about her, when they have an entire galaxy to fill whatever gaps she left behind. But hiding here, she likes to remember them. “And tell him I pretend that he watches.”

“Yeah?” Ben has that cocky Solo slump, his legs spread wide, and he's absolutely getting ideas for later. “Want to tell him yourself?”

She holds her mug still, mid-sip. Gulps. “What?”

“In four standard days. They'll be here.”

They've talked about this together. Boundaries and plans. Hypothetical, she thought, for the sometime-future, just to get off after she had told him all the details about before.

If it's a trick, it's a cruel one. But the breeze around them carries only honest anticipation.

“For me?”

“A supply run.” But he's barely holding back another smile and Rey's heart is pounding.

“We _are_ getting low on nectrose,” she says finally.

“I'll put in a request.”

* * *

The days drag, even though Rey spends them preparing the huts. She hasn't asked Ben much about the new galactic alliance, but between hanging doors on the huts and stockpiling firewood, she's curious. So she asks.

It’s what she expected. Easing ex-stormtroopers out of years of programming, redistributing essential things that were hoarded during the war, and forming an interim government are the most pressing tasks. But in the new peace, there are other things they're addressing, too: corruption that has been allowed to fester in opulent rooms for decades because it seemed like a tool, families torn apart, freedoms lost like a slow drip. Although Rey, burdened by the full weight of her transgressions, doesn't want to hear about the political maneuvering, the outcomes have Rose and Finn and Leia stamped all over them. There are no hands or hearts more competent, and she hates that she can’t help.

The knights drift less, finding a steady supply of missions and rewards from the once-Resistance. Their specific talents move them through dim undercities and remote outposts, or keep them standing guard in busy senate chambers, and they hunt new prey.

And, on a fog-shrouded afternoon, Rey and Ben watch an unfamiliar ship swoop low over the water. As it lands, she fixes her gaze on the hazy islands sprinkled along the horizon, trying to settle her jittery nerves.

She's pictured this happening so many ways: on different planets, by accident, years from now, by necessity. But it's here so fast, and the boarding ramp is lowering, and they are the same. It knocks her sideways to see them again, and some are pulling their helmets off like they're returning from a routine patrol.

She missed them. Now that they're here, she can feel the depth of it—the comfort of the group, the feeling of belonging. They cluster around her and Ben, unsure of what kind of greeting is fitting. She waves, and that’s not enough, but she doesn’t know what else to do. Vicrul is beaming at her, and Ap'lek has a blush that's creeping up to his ears. Even Ushar’s inspection of her is a little warmer than his usual appraisal.

Cardo shoves past them all to scoop her up into a hug that dangles her feet above the ground. He smells like filtered air and cold caf, and he pushes his hips against hers and her body knows his. She feels naked in front of Ben. The unvoiced fear—that they only paid her any attention because she was their master—seems flimsy and foolish in the face of tight squeezes and crowding closeness.

“You're smaller than I remember.” Cardo's chin is notched over her shoulder. Behind him, Trudgen reaches to stroke her cheek and it's like she has extra hearts. She'll never run out.

Cardo plops her down as Ben is pelted with shoves and too-hard back slaps, and returns them with matching ones; any tension dissipates like it's been blown away by the sea air. Years of camaraderie catch up with them, and they are a loud, boisterous group as Ben tries to corral them along the path to the Jedi village, his arm slung easily over Ap'lek's shoulders. This part of him—as one of them—is a stranger to her, but it’s hard to imagine that it was ever this simple before.

Rey hangs back, grinning at the way Cardo's deep laugh stands out from the rest and bounces from the cliffs to fade into the crashing waves. It’s amazing how abruptly the island can feel like an open door instead of a prison cell.

Vicrul walks with her, helmet tucked under his arm. He hasn't touched her yet, but the way his dark gaze keeps flicking over to her leaves no doubt that he wants to. They walk slowly, mist clinging to their clothes.

“This is a good place to hide,” he says finally, and the sound of his voice has been buried in her this whole time. “Most unknown part of the Unknown Regions. I'm from a planet a few sectors away.”

“What's it like?” She wants to pull on every loose thread of him she finds.

“I'll put it this way,” he says. “I'd never bring you there. Jakku was bad enough.”

She laughs at that. “Then I'm glad you're here instead.”

“Shit, me too.”

She remembered that he was handsome, but as he slows to let her walk in front of him, to watch her hips swing, she definitely forgot that thrumming magnetism that makes her need to snap the length of her to him.

Vicrul stops and grabs her hand to drag her back. “Hang on a second.” Steps closer.

They're alone now, just at the edge of the village, the group ahead having disappeared around a bend in the path. He leans to put his helmet down on the ground, the metal crunching against chips of rock.

“Rey.” He pushes her windswept hair back from her forehead so he can look into her eyes. “Is he good to you?”

And it's right there in his expression: that it would only take a single word from her, and he will whisk her away. One mumbled “no” and they would fall in around her and shield her and take her with them. The protectiveness is touchingly fierce, even months later, and Rey wonders if it's lifelong.

There are a thousand things she could say about the way Ben treats her: that he has held her through night-long sobbing that wracks her body, and brings her cups of tea to soothe her raw throat when the storm abates. That he is an edgeless forest and she will never tire of him; that he has somehow never once made her feel like she cannot be healed or that anything she felt wasn’t real. That he has helped her see that love grows best when it grows wild.

So is he good to her? The most true answer is also the simplest.

“The best,” she says.

Something in Vicrul softens and his chiseled face is smoothed by a kind of longing she's never seen on him before. “He said the same about you.”

And she loves that they asked him, too. Rey smiles, but doesn’t get one in return. Vicrul is staring at her lips.

“Does he fuck you hard enough?”

Her breath leaves her in a huff. She forgot how he makes words feel like touches, how easily he asks.

“Yes.”

“Does he make you come?”

They're standing beside an empty hut, and Rey grabs him roughly by the shoulder and pulls him behind it. Slamming him up against the uneven stone, she knows it's digging into his back. She doesn't have to hide this from anyone, but wants it to be more private than it really needs to be, and she drags his mouth down to hers. When she kisses him, feverish and stolen, it's the first time and she regrets waiting so long.

Vicrul’s surprise fades fast, overridden by something ravenous that meets her, that makes his armor creak as he reaches down between her legs while his tongue slides against hers, lips strong. He tastes new, and she groans when he takes her hand to press it against his hardening cock.

Vicrul pulls his mouth away to say things into her ear, growled words covered by the way she's gasping. “You want me to fuck you here? Where he can't see? I'll do it. Give me five minutes and you'll be full of come.”

She's got him pinned, and she has to get to his skin. Shoving cloth and leather out of the way, Rey doesn't even bother unzipping his pants before her hand plunges and her fingers wrap around his cock. She can be rough with him, can match the heat.

“Yeah, use your hand.” He's thrusting into her grip, and she could watch pleasure wash over his face like this for hours. “Show me what he taught you.”

Voices and footsteps, sudden and close. Rey jolts away from Vicrul like they're doing something wrong, but their kiss-bitten lips and finger-raked hair won't hold up to more than a passing glance.

“Shouldn't take long,” Trudgen is saying. “The crates aren’t that heavy. We could even—” He comes to a halt, and Cardo and Kuruk almost run into him. He takes in the way Vicrul's adjusting his armor. “Sorry. Don't let us stop you.”

There's no collar, no leash. For her or Ben or anyone, and they all know it. But the buzz of secrecy, however fabricated, sharpens her in all the right ways.

“We were just talking.” She says it so lightly that there's no room for real objection. “Need help to unload the ship?”

“Ky—” Kuruk corrects himself in time. “Ben said to ask you where to put the electrical stuff.”

“I'll show you.” She moves to join them as they head back toward the ship.

Vicrul catches up to her, cradling her ass as she walks, still breathing hard from the way she touched him.

“Love it when you hide it,” he says quietly to her, squeezing. “But I'm going to fuck you in front of him. You know that, right?”

“I'm counting on it.”

He kisses her neck and lets her go with a little swat, leaning back to watch her walk again.

* * *

One of the huts is packed with supply crates and Rey is digging through one, looking for the match to her new FrictionGrip-coated climbing glove.

Ap'lek slips in, weaving through the stacks of crates, and tucks a locked camtono between a field box and the base of the unused bed. He pauses, watching her search.

Alone, the air between them crackles with complications and held-back words, and this time she will be the one to close the last bit of unbearable distance. They can take turns doing that now. Ap'lek sits down on the edge of the narrow bed and Rey drops the climbing glove into the crate and goes to him.

Residual, concealed pain clings to him and she knows she did it. She took and she took from him, giving nothing back, even when she desperately wanted to. When it felt natural to draw him close and let him in, she fought it. And now, at the end of it all, there is only quiet and calm.

She takes a careful step closer and stands between his knees; instead of looking up at her, Ap'lek touches the hem stitches of the dark green coarseweave shirt she's wearing and rests his head on her belly. His hair is a little longer, and she plays with the silky obsidian strands. For a moment, his fingers are stiff on her hips and then he's pulling her close, arms encircling like he doesn't want to let her go.

They won’t speak. Won’t touch more than this, yet. There’s too much to feel and think about, and Rey has wanted to be this gentle with him for a long time, to let herself truly hear it when he tries to tell her things.

And, wrapped up, she wonders at the dawns within ends.

* * *

The fire glows brighter as the suns start to dip below the horizon; its snapping warmth is a welcome finish to the work of unloading and, as Rey comes from the hut with her retrieved blankets draped around her shoulders, she has to admit that the group looks complete without her. The flames are ringed by dark figures on mismatched seats, the rumble of voices drifting over to her. The closer she gets, the more she feels like an intruder, prowling in the twilight, until—

“There the fuck you are!” Trudgen raises an open bottle to her, grinning. “Come find a spot.”

Sitting with his legs sprawled wide, Kuruk reaches up to take her hand as she passes by and pulls—an invitation into his lap. She plops down, her initial shyness already forgotten. There’s not even a break in the conversation.

Ben turns to Kuruk like Rey isn’t wriggling in his lap and covering herself with the generous blankets.

“Flight over okay?”

“Yeah.” He helps her arrange the tasseled wool edge over their legs. The pants he changed into are thin and loose, and Rey can feel the hard muscle underneath. “Got a little heat near the Ison Corridor. They're cracking down on slavers and security's tight.”

“Good. They searched the ship?” Concern weighs down Ben’s words, and Rey thinks of coordinates in the navigation system. Maps to them.

“Just detained us,” Kuruk says. “Organa sent a transmission and chewed them out before they even got the droids on board.”

Small white flowers with five round petals grow from the cracks between the stones, swaying on long stems. Rey has watched the Caretakers gather them to dry for tea, concentrating the sweet and citrusy scent. She leans down to pick one and brushes it over Kuruk's hand while he talks, tracing his fingers that grasp her waist.

“I think the sublight drive could use some work, but it kicks when it needs to,” Kuruk is saying.

Tapping the blossom on his knuckles, Rey listens not to his words but to the purr of his Force signature. It seems impossible that she once couldn’t tell the knights apart like this—Kuruk is an even pulse with thinned edges, like a chip of glass that has been struck and still rings with the blow. She twirls the flower’s stem a final time before she slides it between his fingers and strokes his hand, pleased at how perfectly the petals fill the slight gap.

He leans in to speak softly. “Is this for me, _min larel_?” His lips are close to her cheek, the endearment easy on his tongue. His breath is as warm as the fire.

Suddenly, she’s aware of sitting in the sling of his lap, of how she’s pressed against his thighs. She nods and lets him drag her back against him, seated against his cock. After tucking the flower behind his ear for safekeeping, he presses a kiss to her cheek. His other hand slips beneath the blankets to tug at the waistband of her pants. She has fucked Kuruk in front of everyone, without hesitation. They’ve watched his cock get soaked in her, watched him fill her. And she’s told Ben every detail: the way he asked, the way she claimed them. So this shouldn’t be as thrilling as it is, but she feels different power. Hidden, she rocks her hips.

“Where's your hallikset?” Cardo calls across the fire to him, interrupting.

Without missing a beat, Kuruk grins and bounces Rey a little in his lap. “Why, are you going to play it?”

“No, you are.”

“Am I?” It's obvious now that Rey looks at his fingertips; she rolls the pad of her finger over the callouses on his left hand, wondering how she never felt them when he touched her with long, soapy strokes in the shower. Or maybe she just didn't notice because she was using him, and there was no room to care about what he did when he wasn't with her. She would've assumed the roughness was from weapons, anyway. The realization constricts her throat and she vows to feel him honestly this time. The days of seeing these men as less than they are—as threats, sharpened blades, possessions to claim—are over. She can let them be whole bodies now, with marks from more complicated things, and tongues that have saved-up questions they want to ask her.

Next to them, Trudgen is laughing. “Remember when we were at that cantina on Nar Shaddaa—”

There’s an uproar, most of the knights trying to talk over each other, correcting or adding details. Even Ben is shaking his head and taking someone’s side in a debate over what song was playing. Rey carefully—slowly, so she won’t draw attention to the movement beneath the thick blankets—slides her pants down. Just enough to give Kuruk access.

His touch is tentative at first, getting his bearings. Swirling, brushing. Then more exploration that makes him suck in a breath, close to her ear.

“Are you that wet for me?”

He smells like grassland and a gathering storm. She can’t answer at first, not even a nod. Yes, she’s that wet for him. Yes, he makes her body work. He’s clean heat: a scrubbed-down, humble sexiness that she loves to curl up in when she’s unsure. Kuruk’s string-calloused touch is steady, and he’s a fast learner. She wants to watch him in a cockpit, with his sharp eyes darting over the controls, his hands strong and sure.

She nods now, just as one of the square bottles gets passed to him. Taking a swig over her shoulder, his other hand never stops, light on her clit. She wants to buck into him until the whiskey spills and he gives up on all pretense of secrecy and fucks her loud on the ground beside the fire.

Instead, she waits her turn and passes it on to Ushar without drinking. He raises his eyebrows questioningly, and sloshes the bottle's contents to make sure she doesn't want any.

From the other side of the group, Vicrul gestures to Rey. His gaze flicks down to where Kuruk is rubbing, and she thinks she sees the ghost of a smile. “This innocent young woman doesn't need your corrupting influence, Ushar.”

“Fuck off. She's got a higher body count than me.” He takes a drink and grimaces before turning the bottle to read the label. “Is this Whyren’s piss or what? Bad year.” Ushar picks at the curling edge of the paper, like he half-expects to find the real one underneath it. “Rey’s the only one of you fucks with any taste.”

Kuruk's fingers push into her, and layers of clothes and blankets muffle the wet sounds. Heat rises in her cheeks.

“Stop, you're embarrassing her,” Vicrul says wryly before he addresses her, jabbing his thumb at Ushar. “Is this guy bothering you?”

Blush deepening at the attention while Kuruk is secretly in her, she shrugs. “He can stay.”

Ushar sneers at him. “See? She likes me.” He turns back to Rey, eyes on her as he slithers his long thin tongue around the neck of the bottle, and coils it dexterously, dipping the pointed tip into the hole. His piercing clinks against the glass.

She clenches down on Kuruk's fingers.

“Putting up with you isn't the same as liking you,” Vicrul points out. She’s sure of it now—he’s playing with their attention, teasing her with it. And Ushar follows his lead perfectly, retreating.

“If she didn't like me, she would've killed me by now.”

“Reminder that she almost did,” Vicrul says.

Ushar tips his head back and groans. “If you’re trying to make me hard, it’s working.”

“Come on. We both know I’m not trying.”

It’s Vicrul’s voice, or Ushar’s whiskey-soaked groan. Or the contrast of the cold night with Kuruk’s stroking fingers. Or just knowing that Ben is _right there_ and probably thinking about how they’re all going to fuck her differently. The constellation of thoughts and sounds is doing it, and she’s close.

Rey imagines dampening the spiraling need with a pillow pressed down. She’ll feel it, but she’s been open for so long that she wants this to just be hers.

“Got plans for this place?” Cardo is asking Ben.

“Hope not,” Ushar says. “You know how he feels about Jedi schools.”

Ben levels an absolutely withering glare at Ushar, who just shrugs and takes another swig. “It's true.” Ushar wipes off his mouth. “You don't have a great track record.”

Ben ignores him. “No plans yet.

Her awareness dips in and out like an uneven flow, sometimes shrinking to Kuruk’s calibrated circling, sometimes expanding to the way Cardo is distractedly thumbing his bottom lip while he listens to Ben. Retreating to the slight rolling of Kuruk’s hips against her, then stretching over to Ap’lek’s extraordinary stillness as the others talk around him.

“The Force,” Ushar says, and Rey can’t tell if she’s catching the beginning or end of a conversation.

“Yeah.” Ben says patiently, like he already knows where this is going.

“It doesn't feel the same.”

“Want some rekka?” Cardo points to his hut. “Or I think I've still got a couple Chandrilan monjavs.”

“No, it's different.”

“Balanced.” Ben nudges a branch into the fire with the toe of his boot, sending a spray of sparks into the night when the wood resettles.

Ushar scowls. “Is that what that is?”

“You'll get use to it.”

“Rather not.”

It’s complicated, the chain of thoughts that tip Rey over the edge. Imagining Cardo taking a long drag from a thick cigarra, wide shoulders relaxing as he holds it in, then letting the smoke billow out. Ushar’s tongue prodding, slithering into her while Vicrul says filthy things. Ap’lek watching Trudgen take a turn. Ben, fucking her after they’re done, pulling her hair and asking which one she’s thinking about.

Because she would have to be honest: she’s thinking about all of them.

Blunted in the Force to hide it, her orgasm swirls out as searing breath from her nose. She doesn’t care if they notice or hear, but she wants to be the only one who can feel it. This one is hers. They talk like nothing is happening and their voices carry her through.

Her body keeps fluttering around Kuruk’s fingers through the aftershocks, and maybe it was her tensing legs or hitched breath, or the way she relaxes when it’s over, but he knows and the withdraw is careful. So is his repositioning, his fidgeting with his own pants.

Unless Kuruk stays completely still once he’s in her, this will be what gives them away. If he lets his eyes roll back or she bites her lip and groans, the concealed game they’re playing will be over. Maybe he likes this strange mix of privacy and sharing as much as she does. His cock is pulsatingly hard when he runs it along her wet entrance, and she’s not sure how the angle will work but, for now, he’s content to let it press hot and thick against her.

The conversation has turned to gossip about diplomats and the re-instated senators.

Trudgen squints thoughtfully at Ben. “Your mom's still got it. And I mean that in a really unprofessional way.”

“She'd slap you for saying that.”

A wistful look passes over his face. “I know.”

Ben reaches for the bottle Cardo's holding, and Cardo passes it to him wordlessly. Amid peals of their laughter, Ben takes a three-gulp swill. And another. Kuruk uses the distraction to push into her halfway, disguising the shifting of his body as a readjustment. She digs her heels into a soft patch of grass for traction. Somehow, she forgot the indulgent, indescribable difference of a not-so-often cock- one that she gets to fuck but never has to learn completely. The novelty of a different length, an uncalibrated-for thickness and shape. The new brush of hair trimmed shorter, the fresh way she seats herself against him, taking him uniquely. She fights the urge to ride him hard, kicking the blanket off and throwing her head back to gasp. Instead, she squeezes. Just once.

“Fuck,” he breathes behind her.

“Ap'lek's getting a bit of a reputation,” Trudgen is saying. “That last job has the Hutt cartel gunning for him.”

“You're always welcome here,” Ben says seriously, but Rey can already hear the slightest slowing in it, his jaw looser after the most recent pass of the Whyren’s Reserve. “Stay as long as you want if you need to disappear. Plenty of space.”

Ap'lek keeps his eyes on the ground in front of his boots but nods once in acknowledgment.

Vicrul's gaze darts between the two of them before he looks over at Rey.

She shivers.

“Kuruk, keep her warm,” Vicrul says. “Fucking freezing out here away from the fire.”

Kuruk bunches the blanket over her to better hide what he's doing and wraps his arms around her. It looks like a cozy embrace, but he uses it to get deeper.

From across the crackling fire, Vicrul winks at her.

“It's ridiculous,” Trudgen is saying. “They can't suck his dick hard enough. You should hear the fucking absurd code names they give him. The Shadow Stalker? Night Blade? Sounds like a holodrama that gets canceled after the first episode.”

“Jealous?” Ben asks. Rey locks her eyes on him as she works Kuruk’s cock.

“Fuck yeah, I am. I don't carry that huge thing around because it's efficient. I do it to scare people.” Cardo is laughing at him so hard that he’s slumping in his seat, trying to draw in a full breath, his usual restraint drowned out by the liquor. Trudgen goes on. “And he just shows up somewhere in a puff of smoke and kills two First Order officers we've been hunting for _days_ before we even have a chance to get a clear shot.”

A bottle is making another round and Ben hands it to Ap'lek again, who takes a slow drink before he wipes off the neck. He studies Trudgen. “Get there faster.”

The sound of his voice, finally, makes Rey squeeze Kuruk's cock hard. And in the boisterous uproar of suggestions and mocking that follows, she's unrelenting, allowing herself to grind a little as her muscles work, and Kuruk leans forward to groan into her ear.

“Making me come,” he says shakily. “So fucking good.” His hand crushes hidden against her hip as she drains him, and it’s been far too long since she had this. Inside of her, he feels right.

He rests his head between her shoulder blades, recovering, hand rubbing where he dug his fingers into her to stay quiet as he came.

The conversation is getting more animated, sometimes breaking off into smaller exchanges that let Rey inconspicuously turn to Kuruk like she’s getting more comfortable, just to chat and catch up. She works her pants back into place while he slips his wet cock beneath his waistband.

“Do you want more?” he offers softly, hand riding up her thigh.

She smiles, remembering. His eyes are the color of the summer storm he smells like. He’s starting to drip out of her, and the animal satisfaction of that is enough.

“I thought you said you weren’t nice,” she reminds him.

“I also said I try sometimes.”

His jawline is as sharp as ever, and one day soon, she’ll plant a lazy trail of morning kisses along the square edge.

“I don’t need more.” She traces his fingers, touching where he was inside of her. “But if you want to play your hallikset, I’d love it.”

Understanding—that she wants to know she’s on his strings—Kuruk leans in, a grin spreading slowly across his lips. He bumps the end of her nose with his. “Yeah? What do you like?”

“Something slow,” she says, carding her hands through his short, light brown hair. The flower is still tucked behind his ear. “And not too sad.”

He gives her a quick kiss and it feels like the hundredth time he’s done it instead of the first. He pats her leg, drumming a rhythm for a bit until he bounces his leg.

As she rises to let him up, Ben catches her eye.

“Rey, I need a word in private.” He nods to a nearby hut, dark and cold and unused.

“Go ahead,” she tells Kuruk. “I’ll be right back.” As she starts to follow Ben, she pauses to drape her blankets over Ap’lek’s shoulders and, through the Force, something soft rolls off of him. He touches her hand, fingertips pushing up underneath the cuff of her loose shirt to stroke her wrist.

Vicrul’s eyes are glittering in the firelight as he watches them. Finally, he dislodges himself from his thoughts enough to haul himself to his feet. He reaches out to give one of the half-empty bottles to Kuruk. “Here, you gotta catch up.”

“My playing gets shitty when I’m drunk,” he says apologetically, but takes a swig anyway.

The finger Vicrul points at him doesn’t sway. “I’ve never heard you play like shit in my life.”

Kuruk grins. “I only have to be more sober than everybody listening.”

“I’m pickier when I’m drunk, though.” Vicrul tips his chin at Ushar. “And this asshole sobers up so fast, I don’t know why he bothers.”

“Group cohesion.” Ushar is slouched, legs stretched out long, his fingers interlaced over his stomach. He rocks his heel a little. “I just want to fit in with the humans. Not my fault my liver works.”

As much as she’d like to soak in the back-and-forth, Ben is disappearing just beyond the glow of the fire. She catches up to him.

“What was that Herglic one you did last time?” Cardo is asking Kuruk. The answer fades behind Rey as she follows Ben into the hut.

The door swings on its hinges and he doesn’t bother to close it. In an instant, he's on her, smelling her neck and lips, and there's more than a whiff of whiskey on him. But he's steady on his feet and present, and when she stares up at him, moonlight filtering in, he looks like he's on the cusp already. She knows every inch of him like she has lived there all her life.

“You smell different,” Ben rasps. “Like him.” His kiss is voracious, blazing over her mouth, and even he feels different to her. Maybe it’s the unfamiliarity of what he drank swirling over his tongue and mixing with his taste. Maybe it’s his messy hunger for her, stretched almost to breaking, but it’s safe.

Ben slides his hand down the front of her pants, and swirls his fingers in the wetness before rubbing them together to feel the slip and tack and thickness. It's the first time he's felt someone else's come in her and Rey can tell when he likes something she does with her hips or her tongue or her words, but this is on a completely different level. The intensity of his need aches through the stone building.

“Fuck.” It’s drawn long into a groan. Ben pulls his hand away to look at the shine of come on his fingers. As much as he loves this, he’s gentle as he dips his fingers into her mouth. Saline and her. “You thought I wouldn't notice?”

She weaves her tongue between his wide fingers. Then adds suction. The quiet sucking sounds have him leaning down to watch. She wanted him to know for sure—like this, when he touched her.

“I need to come,” he tells her thickly as he gets his cock out. When he grips it, his exhale is a gust through his gritted teeth, hand working fast from the first stroke. If they both leave the connection between them open, she’ll feel his orgasm in her own body, the explosion of it different from her own surging climaxes. His are over faster, but so strong that they end with her shuddering. “He used his fingers first?”

Rey nods.

“Show me how he did it.”

This, they’ve done before—she shows him and tells him what was going on while he was burning for her, alone. All the ways they touched her and took her, and Ben doesn’t try to match what they did. He watches her lust-hazed memories and fucks her how he wants, and loves that he’s not the first to do it. Rey licks the desperation off of his body when he’s done.

But that had a distance. This is fresh. Her touch replaces his and Ben is standing so close that it feels like she’s pressed between two walls. He smells like new smoke.

_Does he fuck you hard enough?_

Rey gasps, her fingers rubbing faster, frictionless.

“You’re thinking about Vicrul,” Ben says. He’s not delving into her mind, not feeling her through their bond; he wants her to save up private memories for later, so she can give him pieces of things after they leave. There’s no prying—he can just tell. “That’s your Vicrul face. Your eyes roll back a little when you think about him.”

“So do yours.”

“ _Fuck_.” He loves when she turns it around. When she does the nudging, too. “Who did you look at when you came?”

“Cardo.”

“That’s—” Ben groans, and he’s gone. It hits him hard, knees bent and head tipped back, and Rey likes these ones the most. It squeezes through her too, pouring out between them to flash like lightening behind her eyelids. It’s not hers, buffered from the sharpness of her own nerves, but she’ll take it.

Spent, Ben lets his chest heave and his hand drop while he smiles at her. “I really fucked up.”

Rey snorts as she withdraws her fingers, watching him rearrange his clothes. “What did you do this time?”

“Should’ve invited them out here sooner.”

Her laugh rings into the night as they step out to rejoin the group. The darkness feels warmer, the quick-changing whims of the island unpredictable. It has its own rhythms that she is only just learning. Beyond that, the distant hallikset brings plucked echoes of a song over to them.

Rey stops.

The Force puddles strangely to her left, low to the ground, like somebody spilled a bucket of it and walked off to the far, quiet end of the once-abandoned Jedi village, leaving a dribbling trail.

“Go ahead. I’m just going to…” Rey points.

Ben sweeps his eyes over the spot and something pulls at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, that’s for you.”

He continues back to the fire and the music, and Rey turns to follow the path that veers into the night like disappearing footprints. She memorized the village quickly—each thick doorstep and uneven rock committed to memory. It serves her well now. A fog of murkiness hangs between the huts, intended to obscure. It’s barely holding, as if the starlight can scorch it away and she reaches out with the Force.

A shadow lurches, and strong arms entangle her. Before she can make a sound, a palm is covering her mouth. She’s surprised he waited so long, watching her move along the path he laid out for her. There’s nothing of the whiskey on him, its malty smoke yielding to his own spiced stickiness. It still makes her want to run, but now she knows that she likes it when he catches her. When she relaxes, Ushar moves his hand to her shoulder, tracing the curve of her collarbone through her shirt. He pins her against him and grinds a little, cock hard.

“Wanna play?” His voice is a shiver in her ear. “Later?”

The answer is easier than it’s ever been.

“Yes.”

He reaches under her shirt to draw circles around her navel. “Sleep alone and I'll find you.”

It should be a terrifying threat, not the leg-quaking promise that makes her squirm in anticipation. If he’s holding her for a moment longer than he needs to, feeling her move, she doesn’t mind. And, just as suddenly as he grabbed her, he’s gone, leaving her throbbing.

* * *

The hallikset has a lonesome sound, reverberating and cold from its open belly. The neck ends in an ornately carved, forked piece of wood. Rey watches Kuruk’s fingers press and stroke the strings, and it seems more like thought than work for him, like he can call up lost things from the dark sea surrounding the island without really meaning to. Notes hang in the air until quiet flourishes catch them again, and, close to sleep, it all rounds the sharp corners of her mind.

“What’s it called?” she asks him dreamily.

Kuruk shakes his head, and if he misses a note, she can’t tell. “No name. It’s an old song from my city.” Rey tries to picture him growing up in a city, but he seems so matched to this open-sky remoteness that it’s difficult. “It’s usually played when we miss someone.”

It’s not as mournful as she would expect, with an uplift that sounds like hopeful fondness. “Does it have words?”

“It probably used to.”

So Rey imagines them and studies the sure movements of his hands until the night grows quiet and the fire cools to embers.

And when she falls asleep, she is by herself, feeling everything but alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags for all epilogue chapters:
> 
> Mention of Human Trafficking, Humiliation (degradation and name calling, including sexist/misogynistic slurs and slurs for sex workers), Menstrual Sex (including oral), Threats (of death and injury. Just Ushar things), Erotophonophilia/Murder Kink, Sadism, Breathplay (brief smothering, choking, and compression), Temperature Play, Orgasm Countdown, Femsub, Felching, Brief Infidelity/Secrecy Roleplay, Foot Job, Rough Oral and PIV Sex, Squirting, Heartbeat Kink (including medical devices), Nipple Play, Exhibitionism, Voyeurism, Public/Outdoor Sex, Alcohol, References To Drug Use, Dubious Consent = drunk masturbation and vaginal fingering (Ben is drunk, Rey is sober). Kuruk takes a drink while having sexual contact with Rey (both remain sober throughout the encounter), Reclaim Sex, Brief Long-Distance Relationship Angst, Love Confessions, Kissing, Sharing A Bed, Xenophilia, Resistance Play (struggling, takedown play, encouragement to cry), Crying Kink, Femdom, Cockwarming, is pussywarming a thing? If yes, then that too, Vaginal, Oral, Anal, Open Relationship, Ethical Non-monogamy, Polyamory, Kitchen Table Poly (bonfire poly?), Bisexual Ben, Everyone is Bi in Star Wars, Triad, Group Sex (MMF, MMMF), Happy Poly Ending ♥
> 
> @quamquam20 | 18+


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